Geological Addresses 79 



linear sectious of the same series, of course corresponding beds 

 will occur in a similar order." 



It is of the utmost importance to determine whether or 

 no the same series occurring vertically in the same 

 order in different parts of the earth were deposited at 

 the same time. To explain the problem, Huxley took 

 the following concrete example : 



" The Lias of England and the Lias of Germany, the Creta- 

 ceous rocks of Britain and the Cretaceous rocks of Southern 

 India, are termed by geologists ' Contemporaneous ' forma- 

 tions ; but whenever any thoughtful geologist is asked whether 

 he means to say that they were deposited at the same time, he 

 says, ' No, only within the same great epoch.' And if, in pur- 

 suing the enquiry, he is asked what may be the approximate 

 value in time of a ' great epoch ' — whether it means a hun- 

 dred years, or a thousand, or a million, or ten million 3ears — 

 his reply is, ' I cannot tell.' " 



Most of the standard writers on palaeontology had 

 assumed that the presence in two beds at different parts 

 of the world of the same fossils implied that the beds 

 were contemporaneous, that they had been formed at 

 the same time. Huxley pointed out that the fact of 

 identical fossils being present was, on the whole, evid- 

 ence against the beds having been formed at the same 

 time. Even some of the older writers who believed in 

 species having been created at definite places at definite 

 times had seen that time must have been required for 

 sets of animals to wander from the places in which thej^ 

 had come into existence. The newer theory of evolu- 

 tion was equally opposed to the notion of the appear- 

 ance of similar animals at the same time on far-distant 

 parts of the earth. For such reasons he proposed to 

 reject the use of the word Contemporaneous as applied 

 to rockbeds in different localities which contained the 



