Notices of Memoirs — Prof. LapimrWs Address. 417 



economy of nature the most insignificant causes are competent to the grandest 

 effects, if only a sufficiency of time be granted them ; and, second, that in the 

 geological formations we have the evidences of the actual existence of those mighty 

 eons in which such work might be done. 



The doctrine of organic evolution would always have remained a metaphysical 

 dream had geology not given the time in which the evolution could be accom- 

 plished. The ability of present causes to bring about slow and cumulative changes 

 in the species is, to all intents and purposes, a biological application of Hutton's 

 ideas with respect to the original geological formations. Darwin was a biological 

 evolutionist, because he was first a uniformitarian geologist. Biology is pre- 

 eminent to-day among the natural sciences, because its younger sister, Geology, 

 gave it the means. 



But the inevitable consequence of the work of Darwin and his colleagues was 

 that the centre of gravity, so to speak, of popular regard and public controversy 

 was suddenly shifted from stratigraphical geology to biology. Since that day 

 stratigraphical geology,, to its great comfort and advantage, has gone quietly on its 

 way unchallenged, and all its more recent results have, at least by the majority of 

 the wonder-loving public, been practically ignored. 



Indeed, to the outside observer it would seem as if stratigraphical geology for 

 the last thirty years had been practically at a standstill. The startling discoveries 

 and speculations of the brilliant stratigraphists of the end of the last century and 

 first half of the present forced the geology of their day into the very front rank 

 of the natural sciences, and made it perhaps the most conspicuous of them all in 

 the eyes of the world at large. Since that -time, however, their successors have 

 been mainly occupied in completing the work of the great pioneers. The strati- 

 graphical geologists themselves have been almost wholly occupied in laying down 

 upon our maps the superficial outlines of the great formations, and working out 

 their inter-relationships and subdivisions. At the present day the young strati- 

 graphical student soon learns that all the limits of our great formations have been 

 laid down with accuracy and clearness, and finds but little to add to the accepted 

 nomenclature of the time. 



Our palaeontologists also have equally busied themselves in working out the 

 rich store of the organic remains of the geological formations, and the youthful 

 investigator soon discovers that almost every fossil he is able to detect in the field 

 has already been named, figured, and described, and its place in the geological 

 record more or less accurately fixed. 



In France, in Germany, in Norway, Sweden, and elsewhere, in Canada and in 

 the United States, work as thorough and as satisfactory has been accomplished, 

 and the local development of the great stratified formations and their fossils laid 

 down with detail and clearness. 



Many a young unfledged but aspiring geologist alive to these facts, and con- 

 trasting the well-mapped ground of the present time with the virgin lands of the 

 days of the great pioneers, finds it hard to stifle a feeling of keen regret that there 

 are nowadays no new geological worlds to conquer, no new systems to discover 

 and name, and no strange and unexpected faunas to unearth and bring forth to 

 the astonished light of day. The youth of stratigraphical geology, with all its 

 wonder and freshness, seems to have departed, and all that remains is to accept, 

 to commemorate, and to round off the glorious victories of the dead heroes of 

 our science. 



But to the patient stratigraphical veteran, who has kept his eyes open to dis- 

 coveries new and old, this lull in the war of geological controversy presents itself 

 rather as a grateful breathing time ; the more grateful as he sees looming rapidly 

 up in front the vague outlines of those oncoming problems which it will be the 

 duty and the joy of the rismg race of young geologists to grapple with and to 

 conquer as their fathers met and vanquished the problems of the past. He knows 

 perfectly well that Geology is yet in her merest youth, and that to justify even 

 her very existence there can be no rest until the whole earth-crust and all its 

 phenomena, past, present, and to come, have been subjected to the domain of 

 human thought and comprehension. There can be no more finality in Geology 

 than in any other science ; the discovery of to-day is merely the stepping-stone to 

 the discovery of to-morrow ; the living theory of to-morrow is nourished by the 

 relics of its parent theory of to-day. 



DECADE III. — YOL. IX. — NO. IX. 27 



