﻿ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. XXXVii 



First, in regard to fossil plants, it is natural that those less deve- 

 loped tribes which inhabit salt water, should be the oldest yet known 

 in a fossil state, because the lowest strata which we have hitherto 

 found, happen to be marine, although the contemporaneous Silurian 

 land may very probably have been inhabited by plants more highly 

 organized. 



Secondly, the most ancient terrestrial flora with which we can be 

 said to have any real acquaintance (the carboniferous) contains Coni- 

 ferse, which are by no means of the lowest grade in the phaenogamous 

 class, and, according to many botanists of high authority, Palms, which 

 are as highly organized as any members of the vegetable creation. 



Thirdly, in the secondary formations, from the triassic to the 

 Purbeck inclusive, gymnosperms allied to Zamia and Cycas predomi- 

 nate ; but with these are associated some monocotyledons or endo- 

 gens, of species inferior to no phaenogamous plants in the perfection 

 or complexity of their organs. 



Fourthly, in the strata from the cretaceous to the uppermost ter- 

 tiary inclusive, all the principal classes of living plants occur, inclu- 

 ding the dicotyledonous angiosperms of Brongniart. During this vast 

 lapse of time four or five complete changes of species took place, yet 

 no step whatever was made in advance at any one of these periods 

 by the addition of more highly organized plants. 



Fifthly, in regard to the animal kingdom, the lowest Silurian 

 strata contain highly developed representatives of the three great di- 

 visions of radiata, articulata, and mollusca, showing that the marine 

 invertebrate animals were as perfect then as in the existing seas. 

 They also comprise some indications of fish, the scarcity of which 

 in a fossil state, as well as the absence of cetacea, does not appear 

 inexplicable in the present imperfect state of our investigations, when 

 we consider the corresponding rarity and sometimes the absence of 

 the like remains observed in dredging the beds of existing seas. 



Sixthly, the upper Silurian group contains amongst its fossil fish 

 cestraciont sharks, than which no ichthyic type is more elevated. 



Seventhly, in the carboniferous fauna there have been recently 

 discovered several skeletons of reptiles of by no means a low or 

 simple organization, and in the Permian there are saurian s of as high 

 a grade as any now existing, while the absence of terrestrial mam- 

 malia in the palaeozoic rocks generally may admit of the same expla- 



