ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. xH 



sophy for 1821. In this paper, justly considered a most able one, 

 Dr. Buckland pointed out the errors which were the natural result 

 of the too ready and general use of the ancient term *' transition." The 

 identity of the crystalline axis of the Alpine chain with the so-called 

 primitive rocks, whether massive or schistose, of other parts of the 

 world, was accepted as a well-known fact ; but from this point up- 

 wards Dr. Buckland' s task was one of correction. Separating at 

 once from the transition class, to which they had been by several 

 writers on the Alps allotted, the salt and gypsum, the older Alpine 

 limestone, and the red sandstones, conglomerates, and porphyry, he 

 placed them in the new red sandstone system of England ; the Alpine 

 limestone being, in his opinion, the equivalent of the zechstein and 

 magnesian limestone, whilst the younger Alpine limestone was divided 

 into three sections, the lower corresponding ^vith the Jura limestone, 

 the middle with the greensand, and the upper with the chalk. Below 

 these rocks Dr. Buckland admitted a true transition series, identical, 

 as he says, with the then so-called greywacke slates of Cornwall, Wales, 

 and Ireland ; and, in fact, he placed the schists of Blattenburg in the 

 Canton of Glarus, and of IMatt in the same canton, in this section. 

 It is true that subsequent research has carried the reform of the old 

 views of Swiss geologists much further, and that much of the trans- 

 ition strata admitted as such by Buckland has been transferred to 

 formations of a i'ar m.ore recent date ; yet we must admit that his first 

 steps towards this reform were bold, and that his classification of the 

 several dolomitic strata, as well as of the successive formations of 

 gypsum, in reference to their better-known analogies, was a valuable 

 rectification of the views then entertained. In fact, the difficulties 

 he had to contend with may be understood from his own statement, 

 that the term "greywacke" had been applied to beds of the new 

 red sandstone formation, as well as to true transition rocks ; that 

 of "transition limestone" to the Alpine limestone or magnesian 

 limestone, as well as to true transition limestone ; that of " transition 

 gypsum" to the saliferous gypsum of the new red sandstone, as 

 well as to that which accompanies true greywacke; "Pierre" and 

 *' gryphites" to lias, " Calcaire a gryphites" to magnesian limestone ; 

 *' Jura limestone" to oolite, lias; and magnesian limestone; "nagelfluh" 

 (the position of which in the tertiary formations was so well shown by 

 Buckland) to agglutinated gravel, Riga pudding-stone, and new red 

 sandstone conglomerate. That Dr. Buckland should not have 

 entirely reduced this mass of confusion to order, can be no matter of 

 surprise, more especially when we remember how many long-received 

 opinions had to be abandoned before one should be found bold 

 enough to suppose, as Murchison did, that crystalline schists might 

 be metamorphosed strata even of the cretaceous epoch. 



1823. — I have retained that remarkable work, the 'Reliquiae Di- 

 luvianse,' on which a large portion of the great reputation of Dr. 

 Buckland was founded, that it might be considered by itself. In the 

 Philosophical Transactions of 1822, Dr. Buckland had noticed the 

 Cave of Kirkdale, and explained its relations to similar cases in En- 

 gland and Germany ; but in that great work he enters more fully 



