ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. xlui 



from the then inhabited portion of the earth. I do not say this because 

 I think it either essential or possible to connect the extinction of 

 these animals once living in the caves of Europe with the Deluge ; 

 but because I feel, that from the first moment when living species 

 began to appear amongst the debris of the earth's crust, we have 

 entered on the history of the earth as it now stands, and that from 

 the earliest dawn of the present organic creation to the present time, 

 there have been, as stated so strongly by Dr. Buckland in his other 

 papers, numerous catastrophes, not indeed diluvial as he represents 

 them, but depending on the action of the forces which produced those 

 fractures, upheavals, and subsidences of the earth's crust, which no 

 one can now doubt to have occurred. By every one of these some 

 portion of a fauna, as yet very partially distributed, may have been 

 destroyed ; and I cannot help thinking that when the tertiary strata 

 shall have been fully and finally investigated, the geologist will be 

 able to trace out the regions which have been inhabited by each 

 animal species, and connect the disappearance of many with some 

 one of those great catastrophes, including amongst them, as one at 

 least of the most recent, the Mosaic Deluge. 



1836, Bridgewater Treatise. — Thirteen years had elapsed since 

 the publication of the * Reliquiae Diluvianae,' when Dr. Buckland was 

 called upon to write one of those remarkable works, in accordance 

 with the will of the Earl of Bridgewater, which were intended to 

 draw from every branch of science, moral, physical, and natural 

 proofs of * The Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God as manifested 

 in the Creation.' It is now unnecessary to dwell upon that portion 

 of the work which endeavours to remove the scruples of those 

 persons who desire to explain all natural phsenomena in reference 

 to the text of Scripture, as the error of confounding a moral with 

 a physical revelation has already nearly expired, and even the most 

 pious men now study nature only in the records which have been 

 preserved of it either upon or in the earth's crust ; but, leaving this 

 ground no longer debateable amongst men of science, it may be fairly 

 said that this work is a compendium of geological and palseontologicai 

 science up to the date of its publication, enriched by many reflections 

 of a highly philosophical character. The keen perception of Dillwyn, 

 now also lost to us, in discovering that the fossil turbinate univalves 

 of the earlier formations, up to the lias, belong to herbivorous genera, 

 whilst carnivorous univalves are very rare below the chalk and very 

 abundant above it, was put into contrast with the equally remarkable 

 distribution in time of the Cephalopoda, which, by their predaceous 

 and carnivorous qualities, were destined to check the too rapid ad- 

 vance of animal organic life, the period of their maximum in genera 

 and species having been anterior to the tertiary epoch and of their 

 minimum posterior to it. This view of the substitution sometimes 

 of genera, and sometimes of classes, in the place which others had 

 before held, for the production of similar effects in the economy of 

 nature, is deserving of careful attention whenever the theory of suc- 

 cessive creations is brought before us, as it affords a powerful test of 

 the value of the conflicting opinions upon that subject. 



