GEOLOGICAL CONTEMPORANEITY AND 

 PERSISTENT TYPES OF LIFE* 



MERCHANTS occasionally go through a wholesome, though 

 troublesome and not always satisfactory, process which 

 they term " taking stock/' After all the excitement of 

 speculation, the pleasure of gain, and the pain of loss, the 

 trader makes up his mind to face facts and to learn the 

 exact quantity and quality of his solid and reliable posses- 

 sions. 



The man of science does well sometimes to imitate this 

 procedure ; and, forgetting for the time the importance of 

 his own small winnings, to re-examine the common stock 

 in trade, so that he may make sure how far the stock of 

 bullion in the cellar on the faith of whose existence so 

 much paper has been circulating is really the solid gold 

 of truth. 



The Anniversary Meeting of the Geological Society seems 

 to be an occasion well suited for an undertaking of this 

 kind for an inquiry, in fact, into the nature and value of 

 the present results of paleontological investigation ; and 

 the more so, as all those who have paid close attention to 

 the late multitudinous discussions in which paleontology 

 is implicated, must have felt the urgent necessity of some 

 such scrutiny. 



First in order, as the most definite and unquestionable of 

 all the results of paleontology, must be mentioned the 

 immense extension and impulse given to botany, zoology, 

 and comparative anatomy, by the investigation of fossil 

 remains. Indeed, the mass of biological facts has been so 

 greatly increased, and the range of biological speculation 

 has been so vastly widened, by the researches of the geo- 

 logist and paleontologist, that it is to be feared there are 

 naturalists in existence who look upon geology as Brindley 

 regarded rivers. " Rivers," said the great engineer, " were 



* The Anniversary Address to the Geological Society for 18C2. 



375 



