492 Henry Woodward — Old Land- surfaces. 



I. — ^Relics of the Carboniferous and other Old Land-Surfaces. 

 By Henry Woodward, F.G.S., F.Z.S.i 



ALTHOUGH unwilling to admit that in the history of our Earth 

 special and peculiar conditions have prevailed at any period 

 since the first advent of organic beings, yet we cannot doubt, that 

 during particular eras, circumstances favoured the development of 

 special groups of organisms which, in conseqiience, flourished in 

 greater perfection and numbers than the rest. 



Thus, in the earlier Palgeozoic rocks Trilobites abounded ; in the 

 Secondary rocks, Ammonites ; in the Tertiary, Nummulites ; whilst 

 the Carboniferous period was marked by its great development of Land 

 Vegetation. Other land-floras we know, however, existed, both pre- 

 and post-Carboniferous, but, apparently, they did not attain to the 

 same richness of vegetation or longevity as that of the Coal-period 

 proper. 



In speaking of any period of the past, especially of one marked 

 by terrestrial conditions, we should carefully guard ourselves against 

 the too common practice of generalizing upon insufficient data. 



"We have so very few records left to us of the old Land-surfaces, 

 whence all the sediments came which form our stratified rocks, that 

 in studying the latter we are too apt to ignore the source from 

 whence they were derived, and to think of our earth in the past as of 

 a great marine aquarium, full of strange creatures of the sea. 



Yet, a moment's reflection tells us that as the forces of heat and at- 

 traction have been for ever acting on our earth since it came into being, 

 there must have been land from very remote geologic times; and, 

 further, if conditions in the sea were favourable to the development 

 of abundance of animal life, those on the land were in all probability 

 equally so. 



Admitting, however, as we inevitably must, the imperfection of 

 the geological record (especially as regards the preservation of 

 land-surfaces), let us endeavour to ascertain whether there is evi- 

 dence to show a continuity of terrestrial conditions, and how far we 

 can follow the same as it recedes back from land to land, further and 

 further into the past, until its shadowy shores disappear beneath the 

 pre- Silurian seas, and we reach the last waif washed from its Cam- 

 brian coasts. 



If we seek for the remains of land-surfaces belonging to the 

 Quaternary period, we shall find them everywhere most abundant 

 and wide-spread, including, as we do under this division, all the 

 latest changes to which our globe has been subjected, and of which 

 primitive man was a passive witness. 



I Eead tefore the Geologists' Association, May 6th, 1871. 



