4 I'ROCliKDlNGS Ol- TlIK CANADIAN INSTITUTl-:. 



■Ai\- coiu-cnu'd only ri'f^ardiiiK llK'ir condibnlions to sti-aliura])liy. Working IokcIIut, 

 'tJicso Iwo great men lliorouglnly sliulicil llic- geology and paheontology of the 

 Paris ibasin, and established the systematic arrangement of the Tertiary or Kain- 

 ozoic formations so firmly that although many new minor divisions have been 

 added, tew alterations have been made, and the main features of the present classi- 

 iication are as they arranged them. They distinctly state that they based their 

 classification and division of t'he rocks upon the fact that at the same horizon in a 

 series of rocks, even when examined in widely separated places, they found that 

 I he groups of fossils were generally alike. Their conclusions, which in the com- 

 l)kte form reached the public in 1808, were followed in 1813 by the results of the 

 labours of another Frenchman, D'Omalius d'Halloy, who worked out with true 

 stratigraphical principles the Secondary or Mesozoic rocks of France. 



Turning now to the development of stratigraphy in England, as early as 1760 

 llie Rev. John Michell had stated most intelligently the principles of the stratifi- 

 cation of rocks, but he contributed nothing towards the nomenclature of a system. 

 English stratigraphy practically began with the well-known William Smith. He 

 was born in the same year with Cuvier, and outlived him seven years, but, instead 

 of the splendidly endowed biologist, we have only a land surveyor, imperfectly 

 educated. He drew up as early as 1799, although he did not publish it beyond 

 distributing copies by hand among a few scientific friends, a card of the English 

 strata, with a tabular list of formations from the Coal up to the Chalk, giving 

 the thickness of the several members, lists of the fossils peculiar to each, and the 

 lithological changes. In 1815 he published a geological map covering all England, 

 of which all subsequent maps arfe practicailly but an elaboration, and he established 

 the Jurassic .system as permanently in England, besides much of our knowledge 

 ol the Secondary rocks, as Cuvier and Brongniart did the Tertiary in France. 

 The geology of the Secondary or Mesozoic rocks in England as known to-day 

 is filled with the names of formations given by Smith, and we owe to him the first 

 sufficient arrangenvent of tlie Primary or Paheozoic and tlie Secondary or Meso- 

 zoic rocks from the Old Red Sandstone to the Chalk. So that he and the French- 

 men referred lu cleared u\) on paUeO'Utological grounds the entire stratigraphy 

 from the Old Red Sandstone to the present time. 



Practicailly nothing was known in 1831 of the .stratigraphy of the rocks below 

 the Old Red Sandstone, and 1 have only now to refer to the splendid work of 

 Murchison and Sedgwick in establishing as the result of investigation in Eng- 

 land, Wales, Scotland, the Alps and elsewhere, the Cambrian, Silurian and Devonian 

 systems; and of the subsequent investigations, still being pursued, to work out 

 the pre-Cambrian rocks, the foundation efforts in which are now by common con- 

 sent accredited to our own great geologist, Sir William Logan, whose portrait 

 hangs upon our walls as the first President of this Institute. Sir Archibald Geikie. 

 on whom 1 have drawn most liberally for personal facts regarding the early 

 geologists, says: — ^i)" Tine determination of llie value of fossiils as chronological 

 documents, has done more than any other discovery to change the character and 

 accelerate the progress of geological inquiry." 



The geographical discoverer is unsatisfied as long as there is a shore line 

 not marked upon the map of the world, and naturally the geologist is unsatisfied 

 as long as there is a section in his geological column the nature of which he has 

 not determined. We have shown how the geological column from the top or 

 present time back to the base of the Cambrian lias heen determined satisfactorily 

 by the aid of paheontology. and we have suggested the. value of such a complete 

 record to the student trying to work out the physical history of the globe. But 

 the geologiical column extends belmv the Cambrian lo the .Vrch.ean, representing 

 a period of time regarding the measure of which the geologist, the biologist, and 



(i) Sir Archibald Geikie, "The Founders of Geology," page 242. 



