462. Reports and Proceedings. 
be admitted that plants and animals form many natural groups, the 
members of which have several common characters, and are parted 
from other groups by a real boundary-line, or rather unoccupied 
space. Next, that each of these groups has a limited distribution 
in space, often restrained by high mountains or deep seas, or 
parallels of temperature, within which it has been brought into 
being. Thirdly, that each group has been submitted to, or is now 
undergoing, the pressure of a general law, by which its duration is 
limited in geologlcal time; the same group never reappearing after 
being removed from the series. 
Section C.—GEOLOGY. 
Sir Roperick Murcuison, in his Address to the Geological Sec- 
tion of the British Association at Birmingham, after some con- 
gratulatory remarks, alluded to the addition made by Sir W. Logan, 
in the discovery of Hozodn Canadense, to our knowledge of the 
oldest stratified rocks, which both in Canada and Scotland are 
seen to be the lowest by position ; and, remarking by the way that, 
whether Hozoén be present or not in the serpentinous marble of 
Connemara, that rock is of Lower Silurian age, and not older, he dwelt 
on the fact of a low Foraminifer (Hozoén) being the oldest known 
organism, succeeded in overlying formations by higher and higher 
animals; Fishes appearing in the Upper Silurian beds, higher 
vertebrates still later, and Man last of all in the youngest of Tertiary 
deposits. After some well-deserved compliments to the Foreign 
Geologists present on the occasion, the speaker said—‘ Among the 
recent important additions to our knowledge of the geographical 
distribution and characters of the Silurian rocks, I cannot but advert 
to the successful labours of Professor Harkness. He had already 
shown in the clearest manner, by the evidence of fossils and order of 
succession, that the lowest of the strata in the Cumbrian district of 
the Lakes, the slates of Skiddaw, are truly of Lower Silurian age, 
and not older than the Llandeilo group. Recently, in pursuing his 
labours, he has detected fossils in the “green slates” or volcanic 
ashes and porphyries which lie intermediate between the Skiddaw 
strata and the higher Silurian; and he has further found others in 
the Coniston Flags, which he views as equivalents of the upper part 
of the Caradoc formation. Further, Professor Harkness has shown, 
for the first time, that the slaty rocks of Westmoreland, which sepa- 
rate the Carboniferous limestone from the Permian of the Vale of 
the Eden, contain Lower Silurian fossils similar to those of Cumber- 
land. I hope also to learn from him at this meeting what has been 
the effect of certain great faults ranging from north to south, which 
have impressed a grand and picturesque outline on that region, and 
upon the lines of “which are situated the most striking of the lakes 
of the north-west of England.’ 
Sir Roverick Murcuison then alluded to the good results ex- 
pected from the researches of the Dudley and Midland Geological 
Society on the rocks and fossils of the Lickey, Dudley, &e., and on 
