ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. 167 



sist of deposits of the Silurian, Devonian and Carboniferous periods. 

 A deposit called by the American geologists the Waverley sand- 

 stone, which Mr. Lyell is of opinion corresponds with the old red 

 sandstone of Europe, intervenes in the state of New York between 

 the coal-beds and the Upper Silurian groups, in strata of consider- 

 able thickness. On the western side of the AUeghanies, at Ports- 

 mouth on the Ohio, the same formation also occurs, but greatly di- 

 minished in thickness, some of the subordinate beds being reduced 

 to a very thin slate, others entirely lost, conformably with what is 

 observed in other sandstones and associated slates and shales in that 

 country, viz. by a gradual thinning of the beds as they extend west- 

 ward, and as they become more distant from that great eastern con- 

 tinent, now sunk beneath the waters of the Atlantic, from which the 

 materials composing them must have been derived. 



Our knowledge of the old red sandstone or Devonian group has 

 been much advanced by the Monograph of the fishes of that series 

 of deposits by M. Agassiz, which has just been completed; a work 

 of the highest merit, in which the skill with which the anatomy of 

 the singular forms of that earliest creation of fishes is worked out 

 is quite admirable, and which also contains many highly important 

 general views. This work was undertaken at the request, and has 

 been carried out by the assistance, of the British Association, and is 

 one of the many valuable gifts for which science is indebted to that 

 body. 



The history of the old red sandstone supplies a useful lesson to 

 geologists, by showing them the danger of coming to hasty con- 

 clusions, and founding generalizations, on negative evidence. The 

 formation itself was long supposed to be confined to a limited por- 

 tion of England ; it is now known to extend over large districts in 

 the British Isles and on the continent of Europe. It is most ex- 

 tensively developed in the northern and western parts of the United 

 States, as may be seen by inspecting Mr. Lyell's Map; and we learn 

 from Captain Bayfield that a sandstone which prevails greatly in 

 Upper Canada, and which may be traced all round Lake Superior, 

 resting on granite, appears to be of the same age as the old red sand- 

 stone, or tipper Silurian ; and he also observed in the district of 

 Gaspe, at the south entrance of the river St. Lawrence, a calcareous 

 sandstone with Devonian characters. It appears too from the 

 work of Mr. Strzelecki on New South Wales and Van Diemen's 

 Land, published last year, that, the greater part of the palaeozoic 

 rocks he examined in Australia and Tasmania are the equivalents 

 of the Devonian series. In like manner this bed was long held to be 

 barren of organic remains ; Sir Henry de la Beclie, in the third edi- 

 tion of his ' Manual of Geology' published in 18'33, M'hich was no 

 doubt brought up close to all that was known at that time, says, 

 " F"ew organic remains have been discovered in that rock." Wlion 

 M. Agassiz, in 1833, began the publication of his ' History of Fossil 

 Fishes,' he knew of none older than the coal-measuii.'s, and only a 

 small number in them ; and he tells us that when he first learned 

 that fishes had been discovered in the old red sandstone, during 



