TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 43 



and clearly defined Lower Palaeozoic deposits, in the lowest of which, or the 

 Camhrian of the Geological Survey, another form of low Zoophyte, and a few 

 worm-tracks have, as yet, alone been detected. 



In a word, this discovery of a Foraminifer in the very lowest known deposit, in- 

 stead of interfering with, sustains the truth of that doctrine which all my experience 

 as a geologist has confirmed, that the lowest animals alone occur in the earliest 

 zone of life, and that this beginning was followed through long periods by 

 creations of higher and higher animals successively. Thus, through the whole of 

 the vastly long Lower Silurian period, so rich in all the iower classes of marine 

 animals, whether Mollusks, Crustaceans, or Zoophytes, no one has yet detected a 

 vertebrated creature. Fishes first begin to appear in the latest Silurian deposit, 

 from which time to the present day they have never ceased to prevail ; and new 

 forms of Vertebrata, adapted to each succeeding period, have followed each other. 

 Every geologist knows how, in the overlying Secondary and Tertiary formations, 

 higher and higher grades of animals successively appear, and how the relics of 

 man or his works have been detected in the youngest only of the Tertiary deposits, 

 though certainly at a period long anterior to all history. We now well know that 

 human beings) coexisted with quadrupeds which are extinct ; and we also know 

 that the physical configuration of the surface has undergone considerable changes 

 since such primeval men lived. This subject, opened out in France by M. Boucher 

 de Perthes, followed by some of his distinguished countrymen, has in our country 

 received much illustration at the hands of Prestwich, Lyell, Falconer, Lub- 

 bock, Evans, and others, and is now a well-established doctrine. 



But the great feature at the other end of the geological series, to which I 

 revert, is the uncontradicted fact, which has been passed over by many writers, or 

 misrepresented by others, that there were enormously long periods, following that 

 of the primeval zoophytic deposits, during which the seas, though abounding in 

 all the other lower orders of animals, were not tenanted by Fishes. 



As this is a fact which the researches, during thirty years, of many geologists, 

 amidst the Lower Silurian rocks in all parts of the world, have been unable to 

 invalidate, so it teaches us, in our appeal to the works of nature, that there was a 

 beginning as well as a progress of creation, and that those writers, however eminent, 

 who have announced that Fishes, Mollusks, and other Invertebrata appeared toge- 

 ther, have asserted that which is positively at variance with the residts of the 

 researches of this century. As I have in various works pointed out this great funda- 

 mental principle in the origin of successive faunre, and as at my age I may pro- 

 bably never again occupy a geological chair, I hope therefore to he excused for 

 looking back with some pride, now that I am on the eastern borders of my 

 Silurian region, to the period when, thirty years ago, I dwelt on the then novel 

 fact, never since contravened, that " the Fishes of the Upper Silurian rocks ap- 

 peared before naturalists as the most ancient beings of their class"*. Enormous 

 regions in Europe and America over which these Silurian rocks extend have, I 

 repeat, been long harried, with an intense desire on the part of many searchers to 

 find something which would gainsay the datum-line that marks the beginning of 

 vertebrated life ; and, as all these efforts have failed, I have some right to insist 

 upon the value of such a vast amount of what those who seek to oppose this view 

 still persist in calling negative evidence. The facts however remain, and on them 

 I rest my belief. 



In this short introductory Address I cannot attempt to present to you a sketch of 

 the general recent progress of geological science in other parts of Europe or in 

 America. This must be sought in the well-digested recent Address of the actual 

 President of the Geological Society, Mr. W. J. Hamilton. I must, for the most 

 part, confine my observations to certain British questions, the more so as I know 

 that our distinguished associates of other countries, who honour us by their pre- 

 sence on this occasion, come to us mainly for the purpose of ascertaining the pro- 

 gress we have made in our isles, and also with the -view of visiting those of our 

 typical localities of which they have read. 



* See ' Silurian System,' p. 605. Though the work was not published until 183S-30, 

 the Silurian system and its characters were established by me in 1835 (see 'London, 

 . Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine,' 3rd series, vol. vii. p. 46, 1835). 



