TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 95 



has undergone, portions having been swept away, so that what remains of it often 

 terminates abruptly in old river-cliffs, besides being covered by a newer unstratified 

 drift. To explain these changes, I should infer considerable oscillations in the level 

 of the land iu that part of Franco — slow movements of xipheaval and subsidence, 

 deranging but not wholly displacing the course of the ancient rivers. Lastly, the 

 disappearance of the elephant, rhinoceros, and other genera of quadrupeds now 

 foreign to Europe, implies, in like manner, a vast lapse of ages, separating the era 

 in which the fossil implements were framed and that of the invasion of Gaid by 

 the Romans. 



Among the problems of high theoretical interest which the recent progress of 

 Geology and Natural History has brought into notice, no one is more prominent, 

 and at the same time more obscure, than that relating to the origin of species. 

 On this difficult and mysterious subject a work will very shortly appear, by Mr. 

 Charles Darwin, the residt of twenty years of observation and experiments in 

 Zoology, Botany, and Geology, by which he has been led to the conclusion, that 

 those powers of nature which give rise to races and permanent varieties in animals 

 and plants, are the same as those which, in much longer periods, produce species, 

 and, in a still longer series of ages, give rise to differences of generic rank. He 

 appears to me to have succeeded, by his investigations and reasonings, in throwing 

 a flood of light on many classes of phenomena connected with the affinities, geogra- 

 phical distribution, and geological succession of organic beings, for which no other 

 hypothesis has been able, or has even attempted, to account. 



' Among the communications sent in to this Section, I have received one from 

 Dr. Dawson, of Montreal, confirming the discovery which he and I formerly an- 

 nounced, of a land shell, or pupa, in the coal formation of Nova Scotia. When we 

 contemplate the vast series of formations intervening between the tertiary and car- 

 boniferous strata, all destitute of air-breathing Mollusca, at least of the terrestrial 

 class, such a discovery affords an important illustration of the extreme defectiveness 

 of our geological records. It has always appeared to me that the advocates of pro- 

 gressive development have too much overlooked the imperfection of these records, 

 and that, consequently, a large part of the generalizations in which they have 

 indulged in regard to the first appearance of the different classes of animals, especially 

 of air-breathers, will have to be modified or abandoned. Nevertheless, that the 

 doctrine of progressive development may contain in it the germs of a true theory, 

 I am far from denying. The consideration of this question will come before you 

 when the age of the White Sandstone of Elgin is discussed — a rock hitherto re- 

 ferred to the Old Red, or Devonian formation, but now ascertained to contain 

 several reptilian forms, of so high an organization as to raise a doubt in the minds 

 of many geologists whether so old a place in the series can correctly be assigned to it. 



On Human Semains in Superficial Drift. By the Rev. Dr. Anderson. 



The author gave a view of the alleged cases in connexion with the discovery of 

 human remains in the superficial drifts, alluvial detritus, and such diluvial accumu- 

 lations as are of an ancient or pre-historic origin. Undoubted cases existed of 

 human remains enclosed in hard compact concretionary rocks, buried deep in the 

 silts of rivers, and high up in caverns, associated with the bones of extinct carni- 

 vora now only existing in southern latitudes. One is startled at the idea of a 

 North Briton inhabiting the same cave with a lion, mammoth, or a huge bear, and 

 all apparently contemporaneous occupants, according to their species, of the British 

 Isles. As to the instances occurring in beds of lakes, rivers, and seas, and which 

 have become mineralized, he contended that a few years, or even months, often 

 sufficed for the formation of a compact durable mass of calcareous and siliceous 

 rock, in which human bones, skeletons, pottery, coins, and implements were im- 

 bedded. 



He referred to a case betwixt Aberdour and Burntisland, in Fife, which he ex- 

 amined a few weeks ago, where an incrustation was now forming of great depth, 

 and in which are imbedded land shells, branches of trees, and where on the face of 

 the incrusted cliff twigs of the living trees are becoming entangled in the calcareous 

 breccia. Several raised beaches occur on the shores of Fifeshire, of considerable 

 elevation, and some of them strewed over with shells of the pleistocene age. They 



