Progress of Geology. 3 
Irish Channel on the west, was in a state of dire confusion; 
whilst in Devonshire pi Cornwall many of these rocks which 
from their crystalline ees were classed and on “ as among 
the mest ancient in the kingdom, have since been shown to be of 
no higher antiquity than the Old Red Sandstone of eredordahirs 
As to Scotland, where the ancient rocks abound, though 
their mineral structure, particularly in those of igneous origin, 
Still less had ioe lisprhen region main . palzeozoic, roost eel 
any striking portion of that illustration which has since ap- 
peared in the excellent general map of Griffith, si which is 
now being carried to perfection through the Jabors of the Geo- 
logical Survey under my colleague J ukes. Ifsuch was our be- 
nighted state as regarded the order and characters of the older 
formations at our first meeting, great was the advance we had 
made when at our twelfth meeting we first assembled at 
Manchester in 1842. Presiding then as I do now over the geo- 
logical section, I showed in an evening resriaee how the palzeozoice 
rocks of Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous age, as well as 
those rocks to which I had assigned the name of Permian, were 
spread over the vast region of Russia in Europe and the Ural 
Mountains. What, then, are some of the main additions which 
have been made to our acquaintance with the older rocks in the 
Maison Isles since we last visited Manchester ? 
mencing with the oldest strata, I may now assume, from 
the Plouiuaten of several associates on whose powers of ob- 
servation as well as my own I rely, that what I asserted at the 
een meeting, in 1859, as the result of several surveys, and 
what I first put forth at the Glasgow meeting of 1855, is sub- 
stantially true. The stratified gneiss of the northwest coast of 
the Highlands, and of the large island of Lewis and the outer 
Hebrides, is the fundamental rock of the British at and the 
whi ES) of Sul exhibited in great natural sections on ake 
% é <a aver ast pn. : 
Reports of British gees for 1855 tage Meeting). At that time 
i eee - ven ~_ the same was developed on a og scale e in Canada, nor 
n that order was others first observed by Si Logan. Ithen 
faa} 3) simply pat rene rd the facts as exhibited on the haiticrosh coast of cot- 
land; xistence of what I termed a lower or “ fundamental nea ca! ing far 
beneath ot eissose and eegutaline strata, and containing remain hl 
beneath ier enix of Lower Silurian age. Subsequently, in 1859, whee accom- 
