42 report — 1865. 



knowing; how much our objects were advanced on both those occasions, it gave me 

 the sincerest pleasure to propose last year at Bath, that a meeting of the British 

 Association should be held, for a third time, in the town of Birmingham. 



Intimately connected as I have been with the British Association since its 

 foundation in 1831, when, as the then President of the Geological Society, I 

 headed the small band of my London associates who assembled at York, you will 

 believe me when I say that it affords me the highest gratification in my old age 

 to preside once more over my brother geologists, particularly in this nourishing- 

 town, so near some of the most instructive and attractive of the Silurian districts. 



It is now nineteen years since I presided over the British Association; and fifteen 

 years have elapsed since I occupied the geological chair ; for, although I have 

 not in the mean time ceased to use my hammer, and though I still cling aa 

 keenly as ever to this my own special science, I have, in what I consider its en- 

 larged sense, been led to endeavour to advance, in late years, by every means in 

 my power, the sister science of Geography. I have thus had the happiness to 

 see that, whilst the comparatively new Section of Geography and Ethnology has 

 become very popular, and is always crowded, at all our recent meetings Section C 

 treating, as it does, of the true foundation of geography, has been quite as well at- 

 tended as ever ; and I trust that on this occasion our room will be as well filled 

 as it has ever been in previous years, when this Section was presided over by a 

 Buckland, a Sedgwick, a Delabeche, a Lyell, and a Phillips. 



Great indeed have been the advances made in geological science in the sixteen 

 years which have elapsed since our last meeting- in Birmingham. For although at 

 that time the bases of the classification of the older rocks were then firmly esta- 

 blished, still our knowledge of the correlations and contents of the several forma- 

 tions ascending- from the oldest stratified rocks in which we could distinguish the 

 remains of life has since been materially extended. 



The lowest sedimentary rocks, which, with most g-eologists, I considered to be 

 azoic, or void of life, simply because at that time nothing' organic had been disco- 

 vered in them, have, through the labours and discoveries of Sir William Logan 

 and his associates in Canada, been found to contain a Zoophyte, which tiny 

 termed JEozoon Canadense. The rocks containing this fossil were named Lauren- 

 tian by Logan long before that fossil was detected in them, and simply because 

 they clearly underlie all the rocks of Cambrian and Silurian age. On the same 

 principle of infraposition, it -was my good fortune to be able, in 1855, to point out 

 the existence of these same ancient rocks on a large scale in the north-west Iligh- 

 lnnds of Scotland : and though I at first termed them Fundamental Gneiss, as 

 soon as I heard of Logan's discovery in North America I adopted his name of 

 Laurentian. 



In our islands, however, nothing' organic has been discovered as yet in these our 

 British fundamental rocks, though they are truly of Laurentian age. For although 

 it was supposed for a moment that the rocks of the Connemara district in the west 

 of Ireland were also of that high antiquity, because it was said that they contained 

 an JZozoon, I assert, from my own examination*, as well as from information 

 obtained during a recent visit by Professor Ilarkness, that the quartzose, gneissose, 

 and calcareo-serpentinous strata of the Bins of Connemara, in which the supposed 

 Eozomi was said to exist, are simply metamorphosed Lower Silurian strata. Pro- 

 fessor Haikness will explain this point to you, and will further, I believe, endea- 

 vour to convince you that there is no organic structure whatever in the serpen- 

 tinous rock of -Connemara. But, whatever may be the decision of microscopists, 

 I must, as a geologist, declare that, inasmuch as Zoophytes of a low order (Fora- 

 minifera) unquestionably occur in Laurentian rocks, so it was by no means im- 

 probable that the same group of low animals, having, as far as we can detect, no 

 antagonistic contemporaries, and having been, therefore, free from any " struggle 

 for existence," might have continued to be the inhabitants of sea-shores and cliit's 

 during the long succeeding epoch. 



The mere presence of an Eozoon is therefore no proof whatever that the rock in 

 which it occurred is of the " Fundamental " or " Laurentian" age, that point being 

 only capable of settlement by a clear infraposition of the rocks to well-known 



* See ' Siluria,' p. 190. 



