ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. clxi 



effete or excremental, as t if it had previously existed, though that 

 existence was ideal. 



Admitting then the ingenuity of Mr. Gosse's reasoning so far as he 

 restricts himself to animals or plants, the structure, functions, and 

 growth of which are experimentally known, and even admitting 

 that a work which accumulates so many interesting examples may 

 have its value in exciting a taste for natural history, I regret 

 that he should have thought it necessary to assist geologists over 

 a difficulty which to them has no existence. For this purpose he 

 hints (for he cannot affirm) that it is possible that the inorganic 

 world may also be subjected to a cyclical course, and that the 

 " prochronic " law may be recognized even in the earth's strata. The 

 meaning of this must be, that what appears to the geologist, reason- 

 ing from the analogy of recent causes and effects, a series of success- 

 ively deposited beds characterized by the relies of the organic life 

 associated with each, was in fact a single creation, and that the 

 several layers were so created rather than in one simple mass, in order 

 to typify the future formation, by the ordinary processes of nature, of 

 other masses — masses which may therefore be studied hereafter by 

 the relics of other generations of organic beings with accuracy and 

 reason, although all our present studies are mere delusions. The ex- 

 tension of the same reasoning to the fossils, and the supposition that 

 they may typify some future state into which existing animals may 

 be intended to pass as the cycle proceeds, is manifestly in opposition 

 to the very explanation suggested rather than given of Prochronism: 

 for assuredly fossil bones and fossil teeth, or fossil plants, cannot be 

 considered ideal ; and although the author repudiates the old notion 

 of lusus Naturce, it is difficult to conceive what better notion could 

 be formed of the numerous organic relics which are every day being 

 discovered, if they are not admitted to have been once living orga- 

 nisms rather than mere idealities. I do not dwell on Mr. Gosse's 

 effort to explain away the astronomical fact of the vast space of time 

 which must have elapsed before the Mosaic record of the creation of 

 man as proved by the long period required for the passage of light, 

 before some of the fixed stars could have become visible to man, 

 namely, that the undulation might have commenced at the eye, and 

 proceeded to the star, rather than at the star, and proceeded to the 

 eye ; leaving it to astronomers to notice, should they think it deserving 

 of their attention. I should not have dwelt so long on this work, had 

 I not heard an able geologist and scientific man declare that he 

 thought the argument indisputable ; and therefore I presume that 

 he considered the opinions of all living geologists fallacious, founded 

 on their mistaking ideal creations, both organic and inorganic, for 

 real bona fide plants, animals, vestiges of marine, lacustrine, and 

 fluviatile organisms, deposits of deep seas, volcanic ashes and lavas 

 of all ages. Let us hope at least that no one will again endeavour 

 to solve the supposed geological knot, but allow geologists to study 

 and understand nature as they find her. 



Another matter which has much engaged attention lately, is the 

 degree of ^antiquity of man, as also the question whether man was 



