112 THE PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 
his young science have contributed to supply the missing links of that 
great chain by which we are reaching back from the living present 
into that infinite past through which creative power has manifested 
itself in ever varying forms and conditions in the succession of life. 
Nevertheless all the recognition of Sir William Logan’s indefatigable 
labours is not left for posthumous appreciation. Owing to some 
special advantages which the geological formations of Canada supply, 
the researches of our provincial staff have largely aided in throwing a 
new and clearer light on those Azoic rocks which by their essentially 
inorganic character appear to point clearly to a terrestrial era prior to 
the first creation of life; and thus to offer a scientifice confirmation 
to that initial stage of creation in which the earth was without form, 
and void. Sir Roderick Murchison in his recent reclassification of 
the more ancient rocks of Scotland,* when referring to those on the 
North West Scottish coast, remarks: “'The phenomenon relating to 
these Cambrian sandstones, which may well strike the geologist, is 
that these very ancient rocks, on which unquestionably the Lower 
Silurian rocks repose, should be simply sandstones and grits which 
have undergone much less change than the sandstone which lies wpon 
them,—the latter having been metamorphosed into quartz-rock. 
However difficult it may be to account for this fact, it is at all events 
most instructive as regards the origin nd succession of life in the 
crust of the earth, and sustains my view of a beginning. For here 
the older of the two rocks in Scotland has offered no trace of fossils, 
whilst the more crystallized structure aboye exhibits unmistakeable 
signs of former living things.” Having accordingly set forth in 
detail the evidence and reasoning on which he bases his new views on 
the order of the ancient stratified rocks of Scotland, and their asso- 
ciated eruptive rocks, Sir Roderick Murchison thus proceeds: ‘ The 
beginning of the geological alphabet, as applied in the maps of the 
Geological Survey to the Cambrian rocks of England, Wales, and 
Ireland, must therefore be preceded in Scotland by the first letter of 
some alphabet earlier than the Roman, showing a still lower deep in 
the north-west of Scotland—as in North America,—than exists in 
England, Wales, or Ireland. If this most ancient’ gneiss required a 
British name, it might indeed, with propriety, be termed the Lewisian 
System, seeing that the large island of Lewis is essentially composed 
* Proceedings of the Geological Society, Vol. XVL., page 240. 
