125 
Beginnings of Prose—Genealogies and Theogonies—-Philo- 
sophical treatises—oi Noyor. 
Origin of the common opinion. 
Registration. 
Legends ascribing remote antiquity to writing. 
Indications given by vocabulary and phraseology. 
Concluding remarks on the Greek education and character. 
: 1 : 
(2) A note on the resolution of a" +—,—2 cos na wto 
factors. 
Monpay, February 8, 1869. 
The PRESIDENT (PROFESSOR SELWyn, D.D.) in the Chair. 
Communications to the Society : 
(1) On the Succession of Plant Life wpon the Earth. 
By J. W. Sater, F.G.S., &e. 
In the course of a work on Fossil Botany, I found that I 
could exhibit in a tabular view a scheme of Plant-life which 
should combine a natural arrangement of the Vegetable orders 
with their Geological succession: and I have the pleasure to 
lay this map before the Society this evening. 
I have adopted a prismatic order for the geological colours’, 
because that order truly expresses the gradual and harmonious 
transition of one epoch into another. And since 1848, when 
I laid this scheme of colouring before the British Association, 
I have seen no arrangement of geological colours which better 
expresses the sequence of formations, and their relation one to 
another. ‘There are no hard lines in the spectrum, and there are 
no sharp lines of demarcation in the geological history. What 
is wanting at one place is filled up in another; and, in the 
succession of plants, as well as of animals, the progress of 
1 The colouring is omitted in the printed copy of the diagram. 
