364 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION C. 



perate climate and a thick-growing forest, the feeding-ground 

 of hordes of these monsters, to a frozen wilderness of mud, 

 in the depths of which their sudden destruction and con- 

 gelation is now revealed to us. This catastrophe, though 

 universal in a general sense from the wide extent of its chief 

 phenomena, the depression and submergence of large tracts 

 of continent all over the woi'ld, with the elevation of some 

 mountain chains (possibly, it is suggested, of the Andes in 

 South America), yet is not claimed to have been so abso- 

 lutely universal as to preclude the preservation of large 

 insular areas, upon which many animals could escape the 

 general ruin. 



The enquiry now proposed with all respect and sincerity 

 in this connection is — What further word may natural 

 science have to say as to the nature of the facts alleged, or 

 as to the conclusions drawn from them ? What new argu- 

 ments or new facts may specialists have to offer the general 

 public with regard to the phenomena referred to ? May any 

 hope be indulged that another link may ultimately be estab- 

 lished here between the conclusions of natural science and 

 the simple outlines of pre-historic phenomena which are given 

 us in that ever more and more wonderful book, the Bible ? 

 Have we in these alleged indications of catastrophe any 

 warrant for a conclusion upon any basis that science will 

 accept that the world has known catastrophe, monstrous and 

 universal, since man's appearance upon it? At the same 

 time, we should all be prepared to take it as an axiom that 

 all catastrophe is subject to law, is a part of one law in which 

 natural and spiritual coincide, namely, the moral government 

 of the Almighty Creator of the universe. 



11.— NOTES ON THE PERMO-CARBONIFEROUS 

 ROCKS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



By Professor DAVID, F.G.S. 



