﻿ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. liii 



tained from them a fine series of fossils from the northern slope of 

 the Himalaya mountains, more than 200 miles north-west of Cash- 

 mere. Having therefore as yet only discovered the deep-sea forma- 

 tions of this remote period, we know nothing of the contemporaneous 

 terrestrial fauna. It is but lately indeed that our surveyors in Shrop- 

 shire have determined that land did exist at that period, and have 

 begun to trace out the boundaries of the shores of a Silurian sea. 



In these most ancient of fossiliferous strata, I can neither discern 

 any signs of the dawn of organic life, or of an immature and incipient 

 condition of the animate creation, and as little proof of a restless and 

 chaotic state of the planet, as if earthquakes were more frequent and 

 violent, or the waves loftier, or the marine currents swifter than at 

 present. The corals and crinoids imply pure, clear, and many of 

 them tranquil water, the pebbles are not larger than those of suc- 

 ceeding epochs, and the ripple-marked sands at the bottom of the 

 series, as seen for example in the Potsdam sandstone of Vermont, 

 precisely resemble those of a modern beach. The doctrine of inter- 

 mittent paroxysms, with long intervening periods of repose, is cer- 

 tainly preferable to a theory of chronic turbulence, for those who 

 despair of explaining all ancient disturbances of the earth's crust 

 by the cumulative effect of prolonged movements, or the indefinite 

 repetition of shocks of minor violence. But I must refer you for 

 my views on this subject to my Anniversary Address of last year. 



Some eminent naturalists have assumed that the earliest fauna was 

 exclusively marine, because we have not yet found a single Silurian 

 helix, insect, bird, or terrestrial reptile or mammifer. But if any one 

 wishes to convince himself of the rashness and unsoundness of such 

 generalizations, he need only study the results of a recent dredging 

 expedition, conducted by Prof. E. Forbes, not in seas of considerable 

 depth and somewhat remote from land, like those in which the 

 greater part of the Silurian strata were deposited, but near our coast. 



I allude to the observations laid before the British Association, at 

 Edinburgh, in 1850, by Messrs. Forbes and MacAndrew, who in 

 the summer of that year explored the bed of the British seas from 

 the Isle of Portland to the Land's End, and thence again to Shet- 

 land. They have recorded and tabulated the numbers of the various 

 organic bodies, obtained by them in 140 distinct dredgings, made at 

 different distances from the shore, varying from a quarter of a mile 



