Dr. J. W. Evans — Presidential Address. 509 



The examples of the " early smooth form " of Productus stiblcevt's 

 (aff. sullcevis, mihi) figured by Delepine and Vaughan are used by 

 them as a zone-fossil indicating horizon 8 — Basal Visean. Such 

 a course can only be reliable if the " smooth form " is unassociated 

 with any other varieties. 



It is hoped that further work in the Dove Dale area will result in 

 defining the exact position of the " Jlimierosus-beds " with regard to 

 the " Brachiopod-beds ". 



V. — British Association eor the Advancement of Science, 

 Bournemouth, 1919. 



Address to the Geological Section. By J. "W. Evans, D.Sc, 

 L.L.B., F.U.S., President of the Section. 



ONE of the most striking features of our science is the need in 

 which it stands of a large and widely distributed body of 

 workers, and the opportunities which it affords to every one of them 

 of making important contributions to scientific knowledge. 



Ever) r locality has its geological history stretching away into the 

 " dark backward and abysm of time ", and this history has left its 

 records in the rocks of the earth's crust ; an imperfect record, it is 

 true, for much of it has long since been destroyed, but enough 

 remains to reward long years of patient labour in deciphering it. 



Everywhere some one is needed who will devote his spare time to 

 the examination of the quarries and cliffs, where the materials that 

 build up the solid earth are exposed to view, and who will record 

 the changes that occur in them from time to time ; for a quarry that 

 is in work, or a fcliff that is being undermined by the sea, constantly 

 presents new faces, affording new information, which must be 

 recorded if important links in the chain of evidence are not to be 

 lost. It is equally important that some one should always be on the 

 look-out for new exposures, road or railway cuttings, for instance, or 

 excavations for culverts or foundations, which in too many instances 

 are overgrown or covered up without receiving adequate attention. 

 It is, again, only the man on the spot who can obtain even an 

 approximately complete collection of the fossils of each stratum and 

 thus enable us to obtain as full a knowledge as is possible of the life 

 that existed in the far-off days in which it was laid down. In his 

 absence many of the rarer forms which are of unique importance in 

 tracing out the long story of the development of plants and animals, 

 and even man himself, never reach the hands of the specialist who 

 is capable of interpreting them. It was an amateur geologist, 

 a country solicitor, who saved from the roadmender's hammer the 

 Piltdown skull, that in its main features appears to represent an 

 early human type, from which the present races of man are in all 

 probability descended. Another amateur, who was engaged in the 

 brick-making industry near Peterborough, has provided our museums 

 with their finest collections of Jurassic reptiles. A third, a hard- 

 worked medical man, was the first to reveal the oldest relics of life 

 that had at that time been recognized in the British Isles; and 



