149 



beiless parts of his works, Professor Owen has continued to breathe 

 out the very spirit of the founder of palaeontological science. 



It is by sucli labours that geology is steadily gaining a higher 

 place among the sciences. Comparative anatomy has truly been 

 our steadiest auxiliary, and Avell may we do honour to those 

 who impart to us such truthful records ; for, whilst the histories of 

 the earlier beir.gs of our own race are shrouded in obscurity, whilst 

 the first chronicles of ancient Rome and Greece are now admitted 

 to be exaggerated, and often even fabulous, we turn back the leaves 

 of far more antique lore; and, not trusting to perishing inscriptions, 

 mutilated by successive conquerors, and assuming a hundred meanings 

 under the eyes of doubting antiquaries, we appeal only to the proofs 

 in nature's book, and find that their reading is pregnant with evidences 

 whichmustbe true, because they are founded on unerring general laws. 

 In concluding this Address, I can assure you. Gentlemen, that, 

 although not prepared without some labour, its composition has af- 

 forded me both gratification and instruction. Had J not felt a 

 strong obligation to fulfil mj' duty, I should necessarily have been 

 absorbed in the preparation of the work upon Russia to which I 

 have alluded, and could not therefore have been imbued with an 

 adequate sense of the vast progress which our science has recently 

 made in all quarters of the globe. 



The chief aim of this Society has been to gather sound data 

 for classification ; and, following out this principle, I have en- 

 deavoured to show, how the order of succession established in our 

 own isles, is now extended eastwards to the confines of Asia, and 

 westwards to the back-woods of America. From such researches, 

 and by contributions from our widely spread colonies, we have at 

 length reached nearly all the great terms of genei-al comparison. 



Besides ascertaining where the great masses of combustible 

 matter lie, we can now affirm, that during the earliest period of life, 

 conditions prevailed, indicating a prevalence over enormous spaces 

 — if not almost universallj" — of the same climate, involving a 

 very wide diiFusion of similar inhabitants of the ocean. We have 

 learned, that in the earliest of these stages of animal life, no 

 vestige of the vertebrata has yet been found, whilst in the succeed- 

 ing epochs of the Palaeozoic age singular fishes appear, which, 

 in proportion to their antiquity, are more removed from all 

 modern analogies. In each of these early and long-continued 

 peiiods, the shells preserving on the whole a community of 

 character, differ from each other in each division — and in that 

 later formation, where a very few only of the same types are visible, 

 they are linked on to a new class of beings, the first created of 

 those Saurians, whose existence is prolonged throughout the whole 

 Secondary period ; whilst we have this year seen reason to admit 

 that even birds (some of them of gigantic size) may have been the 

 •icotemporaries of the first great lizards. With the close of the Palae- 

 ozoic asra Ave have also observed a gradual change in the plants of the 

 older lands, and that the rank and tropical vegetation of the Carbo- 

 niferous epoch is succeeded by a peculiar flora. In the next, or 



