TRANSACTIONS 0¥ THE SECTIONS. 61 



tlie liill. Nothiug gives us a clearer insight into tlie fact that all fossil species had 

 a limited life in time than the distribution of the Echinodermata of the Jurassic 

 strata, inasmuch as tliese animals possess a skeleton of remarkable structure, on 

 which generic and specific characters are well preserved ; they form, therefore, au 

 important class of tlie luvertebrata for the stud}^ of the life-history of species in 

 time and space ; and the Table of the stratigraphical distribution of the Jurassic 

 Echinoderms which I now exhibit reduces these observations to a practical demon- 

 stration. 



The Oolitic rocks were formed in a coral sea analogous to that which rolls its 

 waters in the Pacific between 30° on each side of the equator. In the Lower Oolites 

 are four or five Coral-formations superimposed one above another, with intermediate 

 beds of Mollusca. The Middle Oolite is remarkable for the number and extent of 

 its coral reefs, and the Upper Oolite for those found in the Portlandian series. 



The Jurassic rocks were accumulated as sediments or shore-deposits under many 

 changes of condition ; and the idea of a slowly subsiding bed of the coralline sea 

 gives us, perhaps, the nearest approach to what appears to have prevailed. 



The Jurassic waters were studded with coral reefs, extending over an area equal 

 to that of Europe, as they stretch through England diagonally from Yorkshire to 

 Dorsetshire, through France from the coast of Normandy to the shores of the 

 Mediterranean, forming besides a chain winding obliquely through the Ardennes 

 in the north to Charente-Inferieiu'e in the south, including Savoy, the Hautes-Alpes 

 and Basses-Alpes, the JuraFranche-comte, the Jura Chain of Switzerland through- 

 out its entire length from Schafi'hausen on the Rhine to Cobourg in Saxony, and 

 along the range of the Swabian Alps and Franconian Jura. Throughout all 

 this widely extended oolitic region coralline strata were accvmiulating through 

 countless ages by the living energies of Jm'assic Polypifera, as all the Madreporic 

 limestone beds in these formations are due to the life-energies of different species of 

 Anthozoa ; and were we to venture to estimate the lapse of time occupied in the sedi- 

 mentation of the coralligenous Oolites by what we know of the life-history of some 

 living species, we should find good reasons for concluding that the Jurassic age 

 must have been one of long duration. It is not the mere coralline structure ^;f;- se 

 that is due to Polyp-life, but the entire mass of Oolitic limestones are the products 

 of the same vital force ; for there could be no doubt in the mind of any competent 

 observer who carefully examined such a rock as that in my hand that it was a mass 

 of coral secreted by a Jurassic polyp, and that the Oolitic limestone which surrounds 

 the coral stem is the product of a portion of a wasted reef which had been broken 

 up, ground into mud, and constituted the calcareous paste that had coated particles 

 on the shore, and formed by the roll of the waves the oolitic globules which were 

 afterwards cemented by calcareous waters, and the whole transformed into the rock 

 we call Oolitic limestone ; and thus the genesis of the Oolites was due to the vital 

 energies of the myriads of polyps that lived in the Jurassic seas. 



The reefs that remain are merely fragments of what had existed ; and those that 

 have disappeared fm-nished the calcareous material out of which the Oolites of sub- 

 sequent formations have been built up. 



I have to thank my old friend Mr. Etheridge for the valuable notes he has 

 supplied on the Mendip Hills (which he knows so well), and to Mr. M'Murtrie for 

 his excellent notes on the Radstock district (which he has so long explored), and to 

 Mr. Stoddart for kindness and assistance in many ways. Without their friendly 

 cooperation it would have been impossible for me to have given so much exact 

 information on the structure of the interesting and complicated region in which we 

 have again assembled. 



In these remarks I have cra-efully avoided any allusion to the origin of species, 

 because Geology suggests no theory of natural causes, and Paljeontology affords no 

 support to the hypothesis which seeks by a system of evolution to derive all the 

 varied forms of organic life from preexisting organisms of a lower type. As far as 

 I have been able to read the records of the rocks, I confess I have failed to discover 

 any lineal series among the vast assemblnge of extinct species, which might form a 

 basis and lend reliable biological support to such a theory. Instead of a grada- 

 tion upwards in certain groups and classes of fossil animals, we find, on the con- 

 trary, that their first representatives are not the lowest, but often highly organized 



