2 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 



facts which have no clear connection with other established items of knowledge. 

 Many among the so-called practical men of the world realize the value of the 

 entomologist who can do something to check the ravages of insects injurious to 

 vegetation, the botanist who understands problems of forestry, or who with the 

 added knowledge of the chemist knows the food or the medicinal value of plants, 

 thie geologist who happens to discover a coal or a gold mine, the biologist who 

 actually saves human life by his knowledge of bacteria, or who by his knowledge 

 of their habits shows how the fish supply of the world may be increased. But 

 they do not always understand that the scientific discoverers who are thus able 

 to do some direct good to man would not in all probability have attained such 

 -knowledge had they attacked the unknown fields of science in any other spirit than 

 that which recognizes that all newly discovered items of fact are infinitely valuable, 

 whether we can at the moment put thiem to any direct use or not. 



No one is wise enough to recognize the full value of a newly-discovered fact. 

 One new fact may seem to have nothing to recommend it, except its anomalous 

 character. Another may seem of enormous importance. But some later dis- 

 covery may change all this, disclosing the value of the apparently anomalous 

 fact and diminishing the value of that which seemed the most important Our 

 duty is to treasure every new truth or fact discovered, no matter how unimportant 

 it may appear. We can readily understand that what seems now of trifling value 

 may be intimately connected with the working out of some problem in which 

 man is deeply interested. 



This may seem an unnecessarily elaborate manner in which to draw your 

 attention to the claims of palaeontology, the subject in which I hope to interest 

 you to-night. In its early history it was peculiarly a study in which patience 

 was necessary in recording facts which seemed to have little more than mere 

 stratigraphical value to the discoverers. And even now that it may claim to be a 

 body of systematized knowledge, its value is certainly underestimated in this 

 centre of colleges and universities. 



The simplest manner in which to judge of the value of any particular branch 

 of science, such as palaeontology, is doubtless to consider its interdependence 

 with other branches of science. In the ultimate analysis, of course, all science is 

 interdependent, but I refer to that interdependence which at once occurs to the 

 student who desires to be a specialist The entomologist soon finds that he must 

 know something of botany, the botanist that he must know something of ento- 

 mology. Both soon learn, also, that without some knowledge of geology, if 

 only of soils and altitudes, they cannot proceed very far. 



Let us, then, first consider the value of palseomtology to the student who 

 is trying to work out the physical history of the globe. In the record of fossils 

 he finds almost his only sure guide. If he tries to work backward through the 

 crust of the earth, beginning with the most recent conditions on the surface, he 

 finds that there is but one satisfactory guide proving the regular succession of 

 the different strata of rocks, and this is palasontoilogy. If he concludes that the 

 stratigraphical arrangement of the sedimentary rocks is for practical purposes the 

 most satisfactory measure of time, he must also conclude that without the pakeon- 

 tological record there could be no system of stratigraphy, and that where the 

 stratigraphic sequence is broken there is little beside the correlation of the fauna 

 in the two unconformable strata from which to measure thetime represented by 

 the break in the sequence. It may be well to recount very briefly how our present 

 knowledge of stratigraphy has been gained and the extent to which this knowledge 

 is due to palaeontology. The first attempt to systematize the rocks comprising 

 the crust of the earth was made by the Freiburg professor of mineralogy, Werner. '^^ 



(i) Many of the references to individual geologists have been taken from Sir Archibald Geikie's " Founders 

 of Geology." 



