20 REPOET — 1881. 



small marsupials belonging to the Stonesfield slates ; the most ancient 

 mammal now known is Microlestes antiquus from the Keuper of Wiir- 

 temberc : the oldest bird known in 1831 belonged to tbe period of the 

 London Clay, the oldest now known is the Archseopteryx of the Solen- 

 hofen slates, though it is probable that some at any rate of the footsteps 

 on the Triassic rocks are those of birds. So again the Amphibia have 

 been carried back from the Trias to the Coal-measures ; Fish from the 

 Old Red Sandstone to the Upper Silurian ; Reptiles to the Trias; Insects 

 from the Cretaceous to the Devonian ; Mollusca and Crastacea from the 

 Silurian to the Lower Cambrian. The rocks below tbe Cambrian, though 

 of immense thickness, have afforded no relics of animal life, if we except 

 the problematical Eozoon Canadense, so ably studied by Dawson and 

 Carpenter. But if palaeontology as yet throws no light on the original 

 forms of life, we must remember that the simplest and the lowest organ- 

 isms are so soft and perishable that they would leave ' not a wrack 

 behind.' I will not, however, enlarge on this branch of science, because 

 we shall have the advantage on Friday of hearing it treated with the 

 skill of a master. 



Passing to the Science of Geography, Mr. Clements Markham has re- 

 cently published an excellent summai-y of what has been accomplished 

 during the half- century. 



As regards the Arctic regions, in the year 1830 the coast line of Arctic 

 America was only very partially known, the region between Barrow Strait 

 and the continent, for instance, being quite unexplored, while the eastern 

 sides of Greenland and Spitzbergen, and the coasts of Nova Zembla, 

 were almost unknown. Now the whole coast of Arctic America has been 

 delineated, the remarkable archipelago to the north has been explored, 

 and no less than seven north-west passages — none of them, however, 

 unfortunately of any practical value — have been traced. The north- 

 eastern passage, on the other hand, so far at least as the mouths of the 

 great Siberian rivers, may perhaps hereafter prove of commercial im- 

 portance. In the Antarctic regions, Enderby and Graham Lands were 

 discovered in 1831-2, Balleny Islands and Sabrina Land in 1839, while 

 the fact of the existence of the great southern continent was established in 

 1841 by Sir James Ross, who penetrated in 1842 to 78° 11', the southern- 

 most point ever reached. 



In Asia, to quote from Mr. Markham, ' our officers have mapped the 

 whole of Persia and Afghanistan, surveyed Mesopotamia, and explored 

 the Pamir steppe. Japan, Borneo, Siam, the Malay peninsula, and 

 the greater part of China have been brought more completely to our 

 knowledge. Eastern Turkestan has been visited, and trained native ex- 

 plorers have penetrated to the remotest fountains of the Oxus, and the 

 wild plateaux of Tibet. Over the northern half of the Asiatic Continent 

 the Russians have displayed great activity. They have traversed the wild 

 steppes and deserts of what on old atlases was called Independent Tartary, 



