ANNIVEESAKY ADDKESS OF THE PRESIDENT." liii 



handled in detail and developed in all its bearings. I therefore 

 trust that the course I have adopted of endeavouring to lay before 

 you some account of the principal events of the last twelve months, 

 though it may lack tlic interest of the plan I have alluded to, 

 may jet prove satisfactory, inasmuch as the subjects which 

 have lately occupied our attention, embrace the extreme limits of 

 our geological horizon, extending from the earliest dawn of or- 

 ganic life down to the period when the human race dwelt on 

 the surface of our globe, together with animals which, having run 

 their allotted time, are now extinct. The history of these two 

 extreme periods has recently been remarkably developed, and 

 although many gaps still remain to be filled up by the exertions 

 of future labourers, we seem to be enabled to embrace in one 

 comj^rehensive glance the whole history of created life from 

 the Eozoon of the Laurentian epoch dovni to the gravels of 

 Amiens and St. Acheul, and the rich cave-deposits of the South 

 of li'rance. 



Geological Sitrvey of tlie United Kingdom. — The progress of 

 the Greological Survey of the United Kingdom deserves our first 

 attention. Carried on as this Survey has been by an able staff 

 under the immediate superintendence of the Director- General 

 of the Museum of Practical Geology and Professor Eamsay, it 

 is not surprising that its progress has been satisfactory, and 

 that a large tract of country has been surveyed during the last 

 twelve months. 



It has long been a desideratum felt by all English geologists 

 to parallel with accuracy the Palaeozoic rocks of Cumberland, 

 "Westmoreland, and Lancashire with those of North Wales and 

 the Silurian region, and I learn from Sir Eoderick Murchison 

 that their examination is now in active progress by the Govern- 

 ment Surveyors. The researches of Professor Harkness have 

 already demonstrated, by a complete examination of the fossils, 

 that the Skiddaw Slates, the oldest rocks of Cumberland, are not 

 of the high antiquity which had been assigned to them, but are 

 simply of Lower Llandeilo date, as proved by their Graptolites, 

 OrthidfB, and other Lower Silurian fossils. As it will now be an 

 interesting subject of investigation to assign all the slaty rocks of 

 the wild region south of Skiddaw, with their numerous interca- 

 lated porphyries, to their exact equivalents in North Wales, so no 

 one can be more capable of effecting this than Professor Eamsay, 

 Avho has devoted so much labour to the examination of the last- 

 mentioned region. 



The correlation of the Upper Silurian rocks of Windermere, 

 Kendal, and Kirkby Lonsdale, with their equivalents in Wales 

 and the counties of Salop, Hereford, &e., has already been estab- 

 lished, and is, indeed, laid down on the new edition of Greenough's 

 map, but their correct lines of demarcation have yet to be worked 

 out ; and the services of Mr. Aveline, whose skill in defining the 

 boundaries of the several Silurian formations was prominently 

 brought out in Wales, are now happily applied in Cumberland. 



