1883-1884.] 255 



Possessing a limited acquaintance with this district, I feel 

 great diffidence in speaking about it to those whose knowledge 

 is so intimate. I cannot but feel that I have far more to learn 

 from you than to impart, and had I not been so cordially pressed 

 by my friend Mr. Swanston, who, in his kindness, chooses to 

 believe that I must have something new to say about it, I would 

 have waited until enough information about the fossil floras had 

 accumulated to have justified me in giving an account of them. 

 As it is, I can only bring general considerations under your 

 notice, postponing the discoveries which make the investigation 

 of fossil plants so fascinating, and the problems of past distri- 

 bution and migrations of existing plants, subjects of increasing 

 wonder. 



When many years ago I commenced to collect the Eocene 

 plants of the South of England, I little thought they would 

 become invested with the interest they now possess. From 

 them my attention wandered to those of Mull, and thence, 

 attracted by Mr. Baily's papers, to those of Antrim, and hence 

 the pleasure of being here this evening. Still later I found it 

 necessary to study those of Iceland and Greenland, and, finally, 

 I formed the ambitious project of describing the whole of the 

 British Tertiary floras, and fixing through them the real ages 

 of those of the Arctic Circle and America. The first part of the 

 task is making progress, but the possibility of attaining the 

 second seems to recede, for while a few years since we all felt 

 positive that our Antrim fossil plants were of Miocene age, I 

 can now show that we really know nothing for certain about 

 them, except that they are newer than the chalk on which they 

 in places rest. I shall further endeavour to show that the 

 determination of the basalts as Miocene, though hitherto un- 

 questioned, is not founded on any direct or satisfactory evidence. 

 After that we may examine such as we actually possess towards 

 the determination of the question of their age. 



In the first place, two most erroneous, but deeply rooted, 

 assumptions have to be eradicated. The one, that all floras 

 comprising modern and temperate looking genera, such as the 



