114 ' REPORT 1871. 



He advocated the formation of coal from the slow but sure accumulation of peat- 

 gTowth, as that mode of conservation of vegetable matter was proved to be the 

 most certain to yield pure hydrocarbons such as we find the coal to consist of, tin- 

 mixed withforeif/n matter. Such pm-e accumulations could not (in the opinion of 

 the author) be formed in river-vaUeys, deltas of great rivers, or in marine swamps 

 and marshes, but on wide plains covered with a thick vegetation, and tending, by 

 its clayey soil, to check drainage and produce peat-growth. 



Mr. Woodward referred to the discoveries of Devonian land-plants and insects 

 by Dr. Dawson in North America, and to the occurrence of seed-spores of land- 

 plants in Silurian strata ; he suggested that the veins of Graphite may be accepted 

 as evidence of old coal-seams, altered by heat and pressure; and that the oil- 

 springs in the Silurian rocks may be due to the destructive distillation of old coal- 

 beds in Nature's own retort. 



BIOLOGY. 



Address hy Dr. Allen Thoiison, F.R.SS. L. 4" E., Professor of Anatomy hi the 

 University of Glasgoiu, President of the Section, 



In now opening the Meetings of the Biological Section, it is my first duty to ex- 

 press my deep sense of the honoiu* which has been conferred upon me in appointing 

 me to preside over its deliberations. I trust that my gi-ateful acceptance of the 

 oflice will not appear to be an assumption on my part of more than a partial con- 

 jiexion with the very wide field of science iuchided under the term Biology. I 

 should gladly have embraced the opportunity now afforded me of conforming to a 

 custom which has of late become almost the rule with the Presidents of Sections, 

 viz. that of bringing imder your review a notice of the more valuable discoveries 

 with which our science has been enriched in recent times, were it not that tlie 

 subjects which I might have been disposed to select would require an amount of 

 detail in each which would necessarily limit gi-eatly their number, and that any 

 attempt to overtake the whole range of this widespread department of science, 

 even in the most general remarks, woidd be equally presumptuous and futile on the 

 part of one whose attention has been restricted mainly to one of its divisions. I 

 am further emban-assed iu the choice of topics for general remark by the circum- 

 stance that many of those upon which I might have ventured to address you have 

 been most ably treated of by my predecessors, as, for example, in the Sectional 

 Addresses of Dr. Acland, Dr. Sharpey, Mr. Berkeley, Dr. Himiphiy, and Dr. Rol- 

 leston, as well as in the General Presidential Addresses of Dr. Hooker and Pro- 

 fessor Huxley. I must content myself, therefore, with endeavouring to convey to 

 you some of the ideas which arise in my mind in looking back from the present 

 iipon the state of Biological Science at the time when, forty years since, the Meetings 

 of the British Association commenced — a period which I am tempted to particu- 

 larize from its happening to coincide very nearly with that at which I began my 

 career as a public teacher in one of the departments of Biology in this city. In the few 

 remarks which I shall make, it will be my object to show the prodigious advance 

 which has taken place not only in the knowledge of our subject as a whole, but 

 also inthe ascertained relation of its parts to each other, and in the place which 

 Biological knowledge has gained in the estimation of the educated part of the com- 

 munity, and the consequent increase in the freedom with which the search after 

 truth is now asserted in this as in other departments of science. 



And first, in connexion with the distribution of the various subjects which are 

 included under this Section, I may remark that the general title under which the 

 whole Section D has met since 186G, viz. Biology, seems to be advantageous both 

 from its convenience, and as tending to promote the gi'eater consolidation of our 

 science, and a juster appreciation of the relation of its several parts. It may be 

 that, looking merely to the derivation of the term, it is sti'ictly more nearly synony- 



