474 Reports and Proceedings — 



Geological Section at Brighton. Not to dig gypsum, not to open a new supply of 

 salt, not to discover coal in Sussex, but to find out what is below the Wealden, 

 and thus contribute to solve a great practical problem for London and all the south 

 of England, have geologists undertaken the deep boring near Hastings. What is 

 below the Wealden ? Do the Oolitic rocks continue beneath it with their usual 

 characters and thickness ? or do they suffer that remarkable diminution which is 

 observed in their eastward declination through the Midland Counties ? Do they 

 occur at all there? may they lie only in separate patches amidst older rocks? may 

 these older rocks, continued from Belgium, appear at once or at no great depth 

 below the Wealden, and bring with them, if not coal, some sure knowledge of the 

 way in which the great subterranean anticlinal passes from the Rhineland through 

 Belgium to Somerset, South Wales, and Ireland? Such an experiment must not 

 be allowed to come to a premature end. 



Turning, however, from these topics, which involve industrial interests, to other 

 lines of geological research, we remark how firmly since 1831 the gi-eat facts of 

 rock-stratification, succession of life, earth-movement, and changes of oceanic areas 

 have been established and reduced to laws — laws, indeed, of phenomena at present, 

 but gradually acquiring the character of laws of causation. 



Among the important discoveries by which our knowledge of the earth's struc- 

 ture and history has been greatly enlarged within forty years, place must be given 

 to the results of the labours of Sedgwick and Murchison, who established the 

 Cambro- Silurian systems, and thus penetrated into ancient time-relics very far 

 toward the shadowy limit of palseontological research. Stimulated by this success, 

 the early strata of the globe have been explored with unremitting industry in every 

 corner of the earth ; and thus the classification and the nomenclature which were 

 suggested in Wales and Cumberland are found to be applicable in Russia and 

 India, America and Australia, so as to serve as a basis for the general scale of 

 geological time, founded on organic remains of the successive ages. 



This great principle, the gift of William Smith, is also employed with success 

 in a fuller study of the deposits which stand among the latest in our history, and 

 involve a vast variety of phenomena, touching a long succession of life on the land, 

 changes of depth in the sea, and alterations of climate. Among these evidences 

 of physical revolution, which, if modern as geological events, are very ancient if 

 estimated in centuries, the earliest monuments of man find place — not buildings, 

 not inhabited caves or dwellings in dry earth -pits, not pottery or fabricated metal, 

 but mere stones shaped in rude fashion to constitute apparently the one tool and 

 one weapon with which, according to Prestwich, and Evans, and Lubbock, the 

 poor inhabitant of northern climes had to sustain and defend his life. 



Nothing in my day has had such a decided influence on the public mind in 

 favour of geological research, nothing has so clearly brought out the purpose and 

 scope of our science, as these two great lines of inquiry, one directed to the 

 beginning, the other to the end of the accessible scale of earthly time ; for thus has 

 it been made clear that our purpose can be nothing less than to discover the history 

 of the land, sea, and air, and the long sequence of life, and to marshal the results 

 in a settled chronology — not, indeed, a scale of years to be measured by the rota- 

 tions or revolutions of planets, but a series of ages slowly succeeding one another 

 through an immensity of time. 



There is no question of the truth of this history. The facts observed are found 

 in variable combinations from time to time, and the interpretations of these facts 

 are modified in different directions; but the facts are all natural phenomena, 

 and the interpretations are all derived from real laws of those phenomena, — 

 some certified by mathematical and mechanical research, others based on chemical 

 discoveiy, others due to the scalpel of the anatomist, or the microscopic scrutiny 

 of the botanist. The grandest of early geological phenomena have their representa- 

 tives, however feeble, in the changes which are now happening around us ; the 

 forms of ancient life most surprising by their magnitude or singular adaptations can 

 be explained by analogous though often rare and abnormal productions of to-day. 

 Biology is the contemporary index of Palceontology, just as the events of the nine- 

 teenth century furnish explanations of the course of human history in the older times. 



To forget, in referring to this subject, the name of our great and veteran leader, 

 Sir Charles Lyell, would be difficult for any who have profited by the perusal of 

 his masterly works, is impossible for those who, like me, have been witnesses of 



