. 
, 
Oct. 27, 1870| : 
The late Dr, Miller spoke as follows on the occasion above 
referred to :—‘‘ Gentlemen,” he observed, ‘‘representing great 
branches of science, like the Astronomer Royal, were met by the 
Government with liberality ; and scientific bodies, such as the 
Royal Society, when they made an application, after careful con- 
sideration of the objects they had in view, were also listened to 
with respect, and, in the majority of instances, their applications 
were granted. It appeared, therefore, that the great difficulty on 
the part of the Government was to be sure that what they 
expended was wisely laid out.” 
Dr. Miller, as Treasurer of the Royal Society, spoke with 
authority ; he shared with the Astronomer Royal the error of 
imputing to Goyernment a liberality towards science utterly in- 
consistent with that true economy for which they have, in so 
many other matters, earned high renown. 
The whole transaction, considered as the latest notion in 
civilisation, is so ludicrous that it is difficult in speaking of it to 
do so seriously. It may be argued that Mr. Airy and Dr. Miller 
were perfectly correct in their picture of former Governments, 
but that our present Ministry act on different principles, and 
refuse to promote what their predecessors would have thought 
worthy objects. This hypothesis is so extremely disparaging to 
the Ministers of to-day, that I for one cannot adopt it. When 
the speeches I have cited were made I offered no reply, but I 
was far from assenting to the estimates of Government liberality 
to science in England given by Mr. Airy and Dr. Miller. I do 
not now for the first time Say that, not only have English 
Governments, past and present, been backward in promoting 
science, but that no English Government has ever shown that 
it understood the value of science—how it should be pro- 
moted, or what were their duties respecting it. This inability 
to realise the requirements of Science is not confined to Govern- 
ments—it largely pervades the most intelligent portion of the 
community—the whole governing class. For one man of high 
posicion and culture who comprehends the mode of advancing 
science, and the certain effects of advancing it, there are, not 
hundreds, but thousands, who have clear views regarding art, 
literature, and general education. Every man of wealth covers 
his walls with pictures and books, but how many equip a labo- 
ratory or an observatory? The knowledge of science which most 
educated men possess has been acquired by reading only, and 
their notions of what is needed to advance science, of the extent 
of field remaining still unoccupied, of the means requisite for 
cultivating it, and of the value of the produce, are, we find from 
every-day experience, exceedingly hazy. 
The true explanation of the difference between the dis- 
tinguished speakers and those who think with me I believe to 
be this—that the demands made upon the State by scientific 
men and bodies have hitherto been so moderate, so desultory, 
and so infrequent, that few of them could, with decency, be denied 
by men not utter barbarians. I am of opinion that the modera- 
tion of scientific men has been exceedingly detrimental to the 
nation, and utterly opposed to true economy. For it has led to 
the waste of the two most yaluable gifts of Providence—the 
human intellect and the forces of nature. This moderation has 
encouraged the comfortable creed of English statesmen that 
private enterprise will do all that is needful, and that the utili- 
sation of those two gifts forms no part of their national duties 
But suddenly those who have suffered Government to hug itself in 
its inaction, and live in a fool’s paradise of indifference to duties 
which they do not understand, are startled by their own teach- 
ings recoiling on themselves in a rebuff unequalled for its narrow- 
mindedness since the time of Galileo. 
But a new school of scientific men-is now astir, and this 
rebuff will quicken its energies and so do good. 
mission on Science now sits, and at such a tribunal this wrong 
to Astronomy must be heard and judged. Let us hope that when 
next the sun is eclipsed, the darkness on the minds of men may 
not equal the darkness on the earth’s face. 
ALEX. STRANGE, Lieut-. Col. 
The Geological Bearings of Recent Deep-Sea 
Explorations 
Your report of the Proceedings of the Geological Section of the 
British Association (No. 51, p. 503) makes Sir Roderick Murchi- 
son say that ‘‘ he hoped Mr. Jeffreys did not share the opinion of 
his colleague Dr, Carpenter, that their discoveries tended to upset 
modern geology.” I have the authority of Sir Roderick to state, 
that he did not accuse me of any such absurdity ; and that T 
NA LURE 
A Royal Com- | 
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ate 
should find what he did say on that occasion, in dissent from sonie 
of the views put forth by Prof. Wyville Thomson and myself, 
fully expressed in his introductory address, of which he has given 
meacopy. As, however, he there attributes to a passage in a 
lecture which I delivered eighteen months since at the Royal 
Institution, a sense which I never meant it to convey, I shall be 
obliged by your allowing me to give a precise explanation of my 
meaning, 
The passage cited by Sir Roderick is as follows :—‘‘ The facts 
I have now brought before you, still more the speculations which 
[ have ventured to connect with them, may seem to unsettle 
much that has been generally accredited in Geological Science ; 
and thus to diminish rather than to augment our stock of positive 
knowledge ; but this is the necessary result of the introduction of 
a new idea into any department of scientific inquiry.” 
Now I gave not the remotest hint of impugning those great 
doctrines of Stratigraphical and Paleontological succession, to 
which Sir Roderick refers as accepted by Uniformitarians, Cata- 
strophists, and Evolutionists alike; my chief heresy being the 
indorsement of the doctrine of which my colleague, Prof. Wyville 
Thomson (himself a sound and accomplished Geologist), was the 
originator, ‘‘that we may be said to be still living in the Creta- 
ceous Epoch.” Our meaning was this :—There can now be no 
question that a formation, corresponding with the Chalk of the 
Cretaceous Epoch, alike in its material, and in the general 
character ofits Fauna, is at present going on over a large part of 
the North Atlantic Sea-bed. This similarity is marked, not by 
the occurrence of a few types of life (like the Lingule and Tere- 
bratulidze of the older formations, referred to by Sir Roderick 
Murchison), but by the persistence of those which constitute the 
formation itself, viz., the Globigerinze, the Coccoliths and the 
Coccospheres ; as also of numerous types of Echinodermata that 
were formerly considered as essentially Cret iceous, and of a great 
variety of those Sponges (including Xanthidia), and Foraminifera, 
whose abundance in the White Chalk is one of its most important 
features. The explorations carried on by the United States 
Coast Survey in the Gulf of Mexico have furnished results entirely 
coinciding with our own in many of these particulars. 
Now it is, of course, quite open to any geologist to maintain 
that this Formation is a mere repetition of the Cretaceous, at a 
later date, under generally similar conditions. Such was, I pre- 
sume, the idea of those who, several years before our researches 
began, had pointed out the conformity of the material of the 
Atlantic deposit with that of the old Chalk ; and such had been 
my own belief, until Prof. Wyville Thomson suggested to me the 
probability of a continuity between the past and the present 
deposits, on the following ground :—The oscillations of the 
earth’s crust, in the Northern part of the Northern Hemisphere, * 
during the whole Tertiary period, have not been shown any- 
where to exceed 1,500, or at the most 1,800 feet, or 300 fathoms ; 
and as the general depth of the North Atlantic Sea-bed ranges 
from twice to ten times that amount, there is no reason to sup- 
pose that the formation and accumulation of Globigerina-mud 
have been interrupted in any part of its duration. Now the ter- 
mination of the Cretaceous Epoch is commonly regarded as 
having been marked by the elevation of the Cretaceous deposits 
of the European area into dry land; but there is no evidence 
that this change of level stopped the formation of Chalk in the 
deep sea elsewhere. On the contrary, according to the received 
doctrine of Geology, it is highly probable that coincidently with 
the elevation of the European area, there was a gradual subsi- 
dence of what is now the North Atlantic Sea-bed ; so that the 
Globigerinze and Coccoliths of the former area, with such accom- 
panying types of animal life as could accommodate themselves to 
the change of conditions, would progressively spread themselves 
over the latter. 
Now there is nothing more heterodox in this view than in 
M. Barrande’s doctrine of ‘‘colonies,” which is now, I believe, 
universally accepted as the explanation of a large and very im- 
portant series of geological facts—the persistence, in certain out- 
lying localities, of a Fauna characteristic of a formation strati- 
graphically inferior to that in which it presents itself. The only 
difference here is in the relative extent of the existing Cretaceous 
deposit in the North Atlantic, which may hold to that of Europe 
somewhat the relation that the English-speaking race which has 
colonise! America does to that of the mother country, instead of 
* This statement has been recently met by our friend Mr. J. Gwyn 
Jeffreys, who adve.ts to the well-known fact of the elevation of Tertiary 
strata in the South of Euaope to 11,000 feet. But there is no evidence, so 
far as we know, of any such elevation in the latitude of Great Britain, or 
north of it. 
