p. W. Stuart-Menteath — Appendix to Pyrenean Geology. 419 



M. Lacroix has hence abandoned his first impressions of the early- 

 age of ophites, hut M, Bresson, in obedience to that abandoned 

 theory, figures as necessarily mechanical intrusions the ophites which 

 at Eaux Chaudes I have traced as visibly volcanic injections. As 

 a regular sheet of Permian, he figures the crush-breccia of a ferru- 

 ginous lode which cuts across beds of any age. The notion that an 

 unlimited number of worthless arguments amount to one good one, is 

 favoured if verification can be limited to telegraphic phrases. 



As regards the age of Pyrenean granite, even M. Bertrand, after 

 founding his earliest example of charriage entirely on its assumed 

 antiquitj", now admits that it can be Cretaceous or Tertiary, and so 

 follows the example of M. Carez and M. Lacroix, after visiting points 

 I have indicated as decisive. In 1881 1 gave the results of microscopic 

 and field examination of sixty ophites, and the notion of their Triassic 

 age has since been generally abandoned, while their intimate connection 

 with the granite is unqiiestionable. So long as independent observation 

 is classed as a priori inexact, the picture of official geology in the recent 

 Traite de Geologie of M. Haug is a true reflection of his present 

 experience rather than of a past which I had occasion to know. Of 

 the theory of its first Director he writes : " By a strange irony of fate, 

 this theory, in spite of all attacks, has remained unshaken ; the 

 pretended facts of observation, whose interpretation it professed to 

 furnish, have long since vanished as an illusive mirage ... It has 

 literally hypnotised several generations of geologists, in virtue of the 

 great scientific authority and especially the high official situation of 

 Elie de Beaumont." Under his successor my most decisive facts have 

 been regularly suppressed in both France and England, because they 

 opposed observation to authority in unavoidable contrast. To accept 

 the existing conditions of verification is to encourage paradox as 

 practically safe. Obvious fallacies of fundamental method can alone 

 secure attention, and resulting confusion in all geology may indicate 

 something seriouslj^ wrong. 



The description of the entire Pyrenees in the latest volume of 

 the French Survey Bulletin is an avowed extension and justification 

 of its author's first observations at Biarritz. My latest papers, 

 obtainable from Dulau & Co., being a comparison of those statements 

 with the local experience of an engineer, are an unavoidable outrage 

 on high authority. They give the decisive facts concerning Biarritz 

 and Gavarnie. Mr. Dixon naturally refers to them as wholly question- 

 able, and as strangely compromised by references to the dominant 

 theory of Palaeontology. They show that every fallacy at Biarritz is 

 supported by the excellent palaeontologist M. Douville, because those 

 fallacies enable him to evolve a plausible succession of Foraminifera. 

 The innovations of M. Termier and M. Bertrand offer a vastly greater 

 convenience. By their method, evolutionary theories of any fossils 

 can be made plausible against all observations whatsoever. The 

 thirty volumes of Dr. Le Bon's series include one, by a skilled 

 palseontologist, which does for fossils what other writers have done 

 for physics. The Academy of Sciences have noticed in their " Comptes 

 Bendus," but consigned to their archives, two papers which state my 

 results regarding Biarritz and Gavarnie. The theory of Elie de 



