1000 REPORT—1885. 
concerning their conclusions will be laid before the present meeting. In offering 
them—as I am sure that I am empowered by you to do—the hearty congratulations 
of the Geological Section of the British Association upon the auspicious commence- 
ment of this great undertaking, I cannot refrain from reminding you that, of the 
leaders in this important enterprise, one is the son of the discoverer of the Dur- 
ness fossils, the veteran Mr. Charles Peach to whom we owe so much, while the 
other is a very active and efficient local secretary of this Section. 
Nor should I do justice to my own sentiments on the subject, if I failed to bear 
tribute to the judgment displayed by the present chief of the Geological Survey in 
his choice of a base from which to attack this difficult problem, to his loyalty in 
accepting results so entirely opposed to his published opinions, and to his prompt- 
itude in making his fellow-workers in geology acquainted with these important 
discoveries. Unfortunately called upon while still young, and with but little of 
that ripe experience which he has since gained, to grapple with the most intricate 
of problems—problems which the most practised of field-geologists might be for- 
given for failing to solye—his own judgment yielded, though not without serious 
misgivings,’ when opposed to the ardent confidence of a companion and friend, 
whose reputation in the scientific world commanded his respect, and whose previous 
achievements had won his complete reliance. If, like your own Randolph at Ban- 
nockburn, he has ‘lost a rose from his chaplet’ at the commencement of this great 
Highland campaign, we are well assured that the error will be worthily repaired in 
its subsequent stages. 
The conclusions arrived at by Nicol, by Professor Lapworth, and by the officers 
of the Geological Survey concerning the relations of the rock-masses in the north- 
west of Sutherland, are, in all their main features, absolutely identical ; and the Mur- 
chisonian theory of Highland succession is now, by universal consent, abandoned. 
In the second of the great controversies to which we have alluded as having 
occupied the attention of this Geological Section in 1859—that concerning the age 
and relations of the Reptiliferous Sandstone of Elgin—the combatants were found 
ranged in quite a different order. Nicol is seen battling shoulder to shoulder with 
Murchison, Ramsay, and Harkness, in favour of the Palozoic age of the beds in 
question ; while Lyell, supported by Symonds of Pendock and Moore of Bath, is 
as stoutly maintaining their Secondary age. 
The tinding by Mr. Patrick Duff, in the year 1852, of the little fossil lizard 
called Yelerpeton, and the determination of its true nature by Mantell and Owen, 
constitute a discovery comparable in importance and fruitfulness to Mr. Peach's 
detection of the fossiliferous character of the limestone of Durness; up to that time 
no doubt had ever been entertained as to the ‘Old Red’ age of the yellow sand- 
stone of Elgin. For bringing together the remarkable fossils of these rocks, geo- 
logists are indebted to the untiring labours of Dr. Gordon of Birnie—whom, ful! of 
years and honours, and the object of such universal respect and love as indeed 
make grey hairs a ‘crown of glory,’ we rejoice to have still in our midst. Studying 
Dr. Gordon’s important collections, Professor Huxley was able, shortly before the 
previous meeting of the Association in this city, to announce that a crocodilian 
(Stagonolepis), and a second lizard of Triassic affinities (Hyperodapedon), existed at 
the period when these beds were deposited, so that even in 1859 the paleontological 
evidence in favour of the Mesozoic age of these rocks was admitted to be almost 
overwhelming. 
But this evidence has been very greatly strengthened since that date; for 
Professor Huxley has shown that the genus Hyperodapedon is represented in the 
Trias of Warwickshire, of Devonshire, and of India. In the same reptiliferour 
sandstone, with its abundant footprints, there have been found the remains of a 
reptile which Professor Huxley permits me to state is, in his opinion, probably 
Dinosaurian. 1 am sure that you will all join with me in the hope that the health 
of the President of the Royal Society may soon be so far restored that he may be 
able to return to the examination of these fossil reptiles of Elgin, in the study of 
1 See Memoirs of Sir Roderick Murchison (1875), vol. ii. p. 238. 
