ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. Ivii 



sand and gravels of Farringdon, is highly interesting, and all of wliicli 

 have their peculiar value, I must pause for a moment to record the 

 labour and the scrupulous precision with which Mr. Shar})e fulfilled 

 the task, which he had undertaken for the Palscontographical Society, 

 of describing the MoUusca of the Chalk of England. Part 3 of this 

 description, containing a portion of the Cephalopoda, has been pub- 

 lished since his lamented death, and has just been placed in my 

 hands. It contains the description of 25 Ammonites, 11 Turri- 

 lites, and 8 species of the curious body called Aptychus, which 

 Mr. Sharpe endeavours with great ability to allocate to their 

 respective species of Ammonites. Of the iVmmonites described 

 in this Part, 15 are common to our own chalk and that of the Con- 

 tinent, and 10 are as yet only known as belonging to the British 

 chalk. Of the Turrilites 7 are common to our chalk and that of the 

 Continent, and 4 are known as yet only in our chalk ; or, in other 

 words, 60 per cent, of the Ammonites are general and 40 per cent, 

 local ; and of the Turrilites, 64 general and 34 local : proportions 

 which, so far as our present knowledge goes, mark a difference be- 

 tween the faunae of two comparatively near natural-history-regions 

 which is worthy of much consideration, more especially when it is 

 considered that the difference would be more striking were the 

 Continental species which have not been found in our chalk taken 

 into account, and also that the Cephalopoda cannot be supposed to 

 have been so restricted in their powers of locomotion as other 

 Mollusca. 



1854. — I shall now refer to the paper on the structure of the Alps. 

 In this paper Mr. Sharpe abandons the fan-shaped foliation of the 

 gneiss of Mont Blanc, and states his discovery of two distinct vertical 

 lines of foliation, nearly parallel, and separated by a narrow, steep, anti- 

 clinal axis ; and in the same manner he recognizes a similar axis and 

 vertical foliation in the parallel chain of the Aiguilles Rouges. With- 

 out entering into more minute description, it may be observed that 

 Mr. Sharpe' s object is to prove that when the gneiss or metamorphic 

 rocTcs appear to rest upon the secondary strata which occur in patches 

 in this region, it is only an illusion, the supposed planes of bedding 

 of the gneiss being only planes of foliation ; and that, though the 

 secondary strata appear to dip under planes of bedding, they merely 

 abut against the sides of the gneiss, the apparent conformability being 

 simply a conformabihty in the planes of foliation. Had Mr. Sharpe 

 rested here, his opinion would have merely stood in opposition to 

 those of others in respect to the interpretation of the effects of cleavage 

 in these rocks ; but he goes further, and questions the accuracy of 

 other observers, especially objecting to Professor Forbes' s state- 

 ment, that the limestone dips under the granite in the Valley of 

 Chamouuix, as well as to that of M. Favre, who so distinctly asserts 

 that the schists appear to dip under the granite and rest ujpon the 

 secondary beds. 



From the days of Saussure the Alps have been a problem sub- 

 mitted to geologists for solution, and which still continues only par- 

 tially solved. It is in the Alps that the association of anthracitic 



