﻿ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. XXXV 



bird. Next in succession came the brain that averages as four to 

 one, — it is that of the mammal ; and last of all there appeared a 

 brain that averages as twenty-three to one, — reasoning, calculating 

 man had come upon the scene." 



He then adds, " The record speaks also of development and pro- 

 gression in the province of insensate matter, a gradual improvement 

 having taken place in the style and character of the dwelling-place 

 of organized beings in the conditions of existence afforded by our 

 common mansion-house, the earth. A partially consolidated planet, 

 shaken by earthquakes more frequent and terrible than those of the 

 historic ages, could be no proper home for a creature constituted 

 like man, but may have suited the narrower capacities and more 

 limited instinct of the fish and reptile. When the state of things 

 became more fixed and stable, the higher mammals were introduced ; 

 and finally, after the great convulsions and catastrophes had ceased, 

 or become extremely rare and partial, the reasoning brain was pro- 

 duced, that human mind which derives all its power from faith in 

 the constancy of Nature's laws, which regulates all its actions on 

 fixed phsenomena ; — a being which, if placed in circumstances where 

 there was no certainty or stability in the order of the natural world, 

 would become timid, superstitious, and more helpless and abject than 

 even the inferior animals*." 



If we then turn to the opinions entertained respecting the progress 

 of the vegetable world from the earliest periods to the present, we 

 find them ably set forth in an essay published last year by M. Adolphe 

 Brongniart, on the botanical classification and geological distribution 

 of the genera of fossil plants f. His generalizations are expressed 

 with due philosophical caution, and he does not pretend to trace an 

 exact historical series from the sea-weed to the Equisetum and Fern, 

 or from these again to the Conifers and Cycads, and lastly from those 

 families to the Palms and Oaks ; but he nevertheless points out that 

 the cryptogamic forms, especially the acrogens, predominate among the 

 fossils of the primary (palaeozoic) formations, the carboniferous espe- 

 cially, while the gymnosperms or the coniferous and cycadeous plants 

 abound in all the strata from the Trias to the Wealden inclusive ; and 



* Footprints of the Creator, pp. 283, 286. Edinb. 1849. 



f Tableau des genres de Veget. Foss., &c. Diet. Univ. d'Hist.Nat. Paris, 1849. 



d2 



