Dr. H. Hichs — Life Zones in Paleozoic Rocks. 369 



of obtaining an insight into the causes of some of the most obscure 

 physical phenomena. These attempts to enlarge the legitimate field 

 of geological investigation may, therefore, be considered to have 

 been attended with results beneficial to Science ; and instead of the 

 single line of research of a century ago, we have now a perfect 

 labyrinth, each path being an avenue of thought paved with its 

 fundamental ideas and supported and lined by the facts that have 

 been accumulated by Geologists during the last fifty years. 



"The present epoch in the history of Geology may also be said to 

 be characterized to some extent by scepticism as to the exact truth 

 of at least one of the fundamental principles to which we have 

 alluded, namely, the contemporaneity of strata which contain the 

 same or similar fossils, and which are geographically far apart. 

 The late Professor Edward Forbes was the first to cast doubt on the 

 general belief, and his opinions have been recently reiterated in a 

 more or less modified form by several other geologists. Moreover, 

 there is a general tone of wholesome scepticism respecting other 

 matters, noticeable in recent geological works ; especially as regards 

 the simplicity of several phenomena, which are thus apparently 

 being shown to be much more complex than has been supposed, 

 whilst some few others are being proved to be more simple." 



In the same Number, page 5, Mr. Salter, who two years previously 

 had discovered Paradoxides Davidis at St. David's, and to whom in 

 the meantime I had submitted material enough to enable him to 

 announce at the meeting of the British Association of that year that the 

 work had " already brought to light more than thirty (new) species 

 of fossils, most of them Trilobites " (Geol. Mag. Vol. I. p. 289), and 

 who was then about describing the fossils obtained by Mr. W. 

 Vicary of Exeter from the Budleigh Salterton Pebble Beds, in his 

 article "On some Points in Ancient Physical Geography, illustrated 

 by Fossils from a Pebble-bed at Budleigh Salterton, Devonshire," 

 said : " A sea-side walk, with a hammer in the pocket, may discover 

 a new world by accident; for, as Darwin, Lyell, and Earasay have 

 told us, the unrepresented past times have been far greater than 

 those of which we have a geological record, and fragments of the 

 missing pages may turn up at any time. It is hard to realize this, 



no doubt yet every now and then we alight upon new 



geological kingdoms ; and still oftener on new provinces of old and 

 well-established ones. An obscure, but novel, group of organic 

 remains comes to light in some well-worked district, for which we 

 have as yet no fixed geological place. Then the bed containing it 

 is found to have a more extended range ; it begins to be recognised 

 by a local name ; and, after undergoing the usual ordeal of doubt 

 and disbelief attached to a new-comer, and being variously assigned 

 as a local variation of some better-known sfratnm, it settles at 

 length into its rightful position, and secures its hold of the public. 

 And when this is done, we find it is no stranger after all — that some 

 twenty or thirty feet of shales, for instance, packed in with the 

 base of our Lias, are really the representative of some great Alpine 

 Limestones, which range from the Tyrol to the sources of the 



DECADE n^. VOL. I. XO. YIII. 24 



