2S8 [Proc. B. N. F. C, 



Cretaceous Dicotyledons exist in our Museums, and those pre- 

 served on the Continent are not too accessible, while our own 

 unrivalled series of Eocene plants is not yet available to the 

 public. Yet one of the most unaccountable incidents in the 

 development of the science of geology seems to me to be the 

 absolutely unquestioning way in which all our great leaders 

 have accepted the determinations of age which some palaeo- 

 phytologists, as they are sometimes called, have had the effron- 

 tery to evolve out of ridiculously inadequate material. The 

 study has for thirty years been weighted with an influence, 

 which, paralysing all advance, has reduced it to a state difficult 

 to describe, but which can, perhaps, be realised by supposing it 

 to be half-a-century more backward than any kindred science. 



[ must thus ask you to entirely divest your minds of any 

 preconceived ideas as to the age of the Basalts, derived from 

 the presence in them of fossil plants. Had any single geologist 

 who has written about them and assumed them to be Miocene, 

 troubled to look into the evidence, their age would never have 

 been spoken of as definitely ascertained. 



A glance at the so-called plant evidence will render this 

 apparent. It has been assumed, I do not know who is originally 

 responsible for the assumption, that the Antrim plants were 

 on the same horizon with the Mull plants, and that since the 

 latter were Miocene, the former must necessarily also be of that 

 age. Neither of these premises are established, and being so far 

 incorrect, the inference drawn from them falls to the ground. 



The Mull plants were described by Edward Forbes in 1851.* 

 They occur, like those of Antrim, between columnar basalt. No 

 more could be said about them than that they might belong to 

 Taxites f Filicites f Rhamnites ? PJatanites f Alnites ? and 

 that " the general assemblage of leaves, when judged by the 

 present state of our knowledge of the vegetation of ancient 

 epochs, is decidedly tertiary, and most probably of that stage of 

 tertiary called Miocene." Of these plants, Heer was only able 

 to claim one, the Taxites {Sequoia langsdorjii)^ or at most two, 



♦ Journ. Geol. Soc. for 1851, p. 103. 



