96 REPORT — 1861. 



There is, indeed, a peculiai- fitness in now dwelling more especially on the ancient 

 rocks, inasmuch as Manchester is surrounded by some of them, whilst, with the 

 exception of certain gi'oups of erratic blocks and drifts, no deposits occur wathin the 

 reach of short excursions from hence, which are either of secondary or tertiary age. 



Let us, then, take a retrospective view of the progress which has been made in 

 the classification and delineation of the older rocks since the Association first as- 

 sembled at York in 1831. At that time, as every old geologist knows, no attempt 

 had been made to imravel the order or characters of the formations which rise from 

 beneath the Old Hed Sandstone. In that year Sedgwick was only beginning to 

 make his first inroads into those mountains of North Wales, the inti-icacies of which 

 he finally so well elaborated, whilst I only brought to that, our earliest assembly, 

 the first fruits of observations in Herefordf-iiire, Brecon, Radnor, and Slu'opshire, 

 which led me to work out an order which has since been generally adopted. 



At that time the terms ' Cambrian,' ' Silurian,' ' Devonian,' and 'Permian,' were 

 not dreamt of; but, acting on the true Baconian principle, their founders and their 

 coadjutors have, after years of toil and comparison, set up such plain landmarks on 

 geological horizons that they have been recognized over many a distant land. Com- 

 pare the best map of England of the year 1831, or that of Greenough, which had 

 advanced somewhat upon the admirable original classification of our father, Wil- 

 liam Smith, and see the striking difference between the then existing knowledge 

 and our present acquirements. It is not too much to say that when the Britisli 

 Association first met, all the region on both sides of the Welsh border, and extend- 

 ing to the Irish Channel on the west, was in a state of dire confusion ; whilst in 

 Devonshire and Cornwall many of these rocks, which from their crystalline nature 

 were classed and mapped as among the most ancient in the kingdom, have since 

 been sho-mi to be of no higher antiquity than the Old Eed Sandstone of Here- 

 fordshire. 



As to Scotland, where the ancient rocks abound, though their mineral structure, 

 particularly in those of igneous origin, had necessarily been much developed in the 

 country of lluttou, Playfair, Hall, Jameson, and McCuUoch, yet the true age of most 

 of its sedimentary rocks and their relations were unlmown. Still less had Ireland, 

 another region mainly palajozoic, received any striking portion of that illustration 

 which has since appeared in the excellent general map of Grifiith, and which is now 

 being carried to perfection through the labom-s of the Geological Survey under my 

 colleague Jukes. If such was our benighted state as regarded the order and cha- 

 racters of the older formations at our first Meeting, gi-eat was the advance we had 

 made when at our twelfth Meeting we first assembled at Manchester in 1842. 

 Presiding then as I do now over the Geological Section, I showed in an evening 

 lecture how the palaeozoic rocks of Silm-ian, Devonian, and Carboniferous age, as 

 well as those rocks to which I had assigned the name of Pemiian, were spread over 

 the vast region of Russia in Europe and the Ural Mountains. What, then, are 

 some of the main additions which have been made to our acquaintance with the 

 older rocks in the British Isles since we last visited Manchester ? 



Commencing with the oldest strata, I may now assume, from the examination of 

 several associates on whose powers of observation as well as my own I rely, that 

 what I asserted at the Aberdeen Meeting in 1859, as the result of several surveys, 

 and what 1 first put forth at the Glasgow Meeting of 1855, is substantially true. 

 The stratified gneiss of the north-west coast of the Highlands, and of the large 

 island of Lewis and the outer Hebrides, is the fundamental rock of the British Isles, 

 and the precise equivalent of the Laiurentian system of Canada, as described by Sir 

 W. Logan. The establishment of this order, which is so clearly exhibited in great 

 natural sections on the west coast of Sutherland and Ross, is of great importance in 

 giving to the science we cultivate a lower datum-line than we pre\'iously possessed, 

 as first propoimded by myself before the British Association in 1855 *. 



* See Eoport of British Association for 185.5 (Glasgow Meeting). At that time I was 

 not aware tliat the same order was developed on a grand scale in Canada, nor do I now 

 know when that order was there first observed by Sir W. Logan. I then (1855) simply put 

 forward the facts as esliibited on the north-west coast of Scotland ; viz. the existence of what 

 I termed a lower or " fundamental gneiss," lying far beneath other gneissose and crystal- 

 line strata, contaiaing remains which I even then suggested were of Lower Silurian age. 

 Subsequently, in 1859, when accompanied by Professor Kamsay, I adopted, at his eugges- 



