514 Reports and Proceedings. 



the succession of being lias gone on in regular order and sequence, 

 though for a time, or for ever, ^we have lost many of the records — 

 whole chapters, whole books, in consequence of the disturbances and 

 slow denudations which the earth's crust has undergone. This must 

 show, therefore, that there was then no universal catastrophe which 

 destroyed the life of the world ; there cannot possibly have been so 

 because many of the forms are still alive that belong to comparatively 

 old epochs, and to my mind the continuity of genera and even of 

 broader distinctions leads to a like result. But great changes in 

 physical geography have often taken place in times too limited to 

 have involved total changes of life ; for life, I believe, dies out or 

 changes not by violence or sudden edict, but by the slow effects of 

 time. The north of Europe and America has been more than half 

 submerged during the last glacial epoch, and re-arisen without the 

 disappearance of any one marine mollusc. Of the fossils of the Crag, 

 part of an old German ocean, large percentages still remain, and the 

 Miocene formation of the Alps, which contain many land plants 

 barely distinguishable (if distinguishable), from living species have 

 been formed, upheaved, inverted, and faulted without a total destruc- 

 tion of life. Putting all these things together, I feel myself almost 

 driven to the conclusion that all these changes have been so slow 

 and gradual, that to occupants of old time, had there been human 

 intelligence to observe, everything would have seemed to go on in 

 the same slow, steady, and appearently undisturbed manner in which 

 they appear to us to go on now ; and if this be true, then, instead of 

 having recourse to unusual catastrophic action to explain what is seen 

 to have resulted, it all resolves itself into time, and for ever time ; to 

 effects in fact produced by small cumulative causes, and so were 

 more than equal to all the destructive forces which were attributed 

 to eruptions of igneous rocks, the production of faults, and immense 

 contortions of strata ; and the result of all, but not final, has brought 

 about the astonishing changes which the world has so visibly under- 

 gone, resulting in the present physical geology, physical geography, 

 and life of the surface of the earth. 



Norwich Geological Society. — On Tuesday, August lith, the 

 members of this Society made an excursion to Mundesley. The 

 main object of. the visit was to examine the old Eiver Bed, to be 

 seen in the cliffs near the village. Descending to the beach, the 

 members were joined by the President of the Society, the Eev. John 

 Gunn, and Sir Henry Eobinson. With his characteristic straight- 

 forwardness the President led the party directly to work. The 

 Norfolk cliffs are Mr. Gmm's forte, and no geologist is so well able 

 to explain the many mutations through which they have passed as 

 he. The cliffs range in height from fifty to one hundred feet, and 

 although composed principally of clay and gravel, they have a 

 geological history which is transcended in interest by none. At low 

 water, in the Happisburgh direction, the visitor may see dark- 

 looking patches lying along the sea-bottom, and on examining these 

 he finds them to be parts of a Forest bed — a dark clay in which are 



