ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. Ixi 
they then tell us of successive conditions of organic life which were 
(as we know by experience, and might perhaps have conjecturally 
anticipated) of far wider geographical distribution than the local 
physical movements which produced our great physical groups of 
deposits. Hence,’’ he adds, “it follows, that in comparing remote 
deposits, organic remains become no longer the secondary, but the 
primary terms of comparison.”’ 
After pointing out that the lower part of the group No. 3, the 
Coniston limestone, contains fossils considered as those characteristic 
of the Lower Silurian rocks, and that the higher groups, up to the 
base of the old red sandstone, are equivalent to the Upper Silurian 
series, he refers the group No. 2, that replete with various trap- 
pean rocks, contemporaneous with the common sedimentary accumu- 
lations of the time, to the Snowdonian series of Wales, an opinion of 
his as old as 1831-32. The Skiddaw slates occurrmg beneath these 
beds had, until lately, yielded no organic remains, though from some 
traces of carbon long since found by him in them, Professor Sedg- 
wick had inferred that such traces had been derived from some ob- 
secure form of vegetable life, such as a fucoid. Referring to his note- 
books of 1822, the Professor, his engagements preventing an exami- 
nation of the localities personally, despatched Mr. John Ruthven, of 
Kendal, to the Skiddaw slate-district, and the result was the discovery 
of graptolites and other forms considered organic, and referred to 
fucoids. These fossils have been described by Mr. M‘Coy, as pre- 
viously mentioned, and with the exception of one species referred 
to Graptolites sagittarius, are considered by him to be new, namely 
one species of graptolite and four species of fucoids. The re- 
mains discovered in these slates Professor Sedgwick regards as 
those of the earliest organic life, nearly marking its descending 
limit,—no new opinion of his, he adds, as he has often stated his 
conviction that traces of life disappeared with descending sections, 
independently of their obliteration by metamorphic action or mineral 
change. He infers that the base of the Cumberland series is more 
perfect and symmetrical than that of Wales, and that the Lingula 
beds of Merionethshire are higher, mm the geological series, than the 
Skiddaw slates. He then points to the great Cambrian and Cum- 
brian group of the slate and trappean rocks as the most remarkable 
physical group in the British Islands; and, after detailing his views 
on the subject, includes it in his lower division of the palzeozoic 
rocks, by whatever name it may be thought desirable to designate it. 
That there are accumulations of older geological date in the British 
Islands than the equivalents of the Llandeilo flags of South Wales, 
there is now good evidence; indeed, the continuation of the Llandeilo 
flags rests upon older rocks in the St. David’s district of Pem- 
brokeshire ; and when the labours of the Geological Survey upon the 
older palzeozoic rocks in other parts of Wales, with adjoming portions 
of England, and in Ireland, become sufficiently completed for publica- 
tion, other evidences will be adduced of anterior accumulations of 
great thickness. For the present it may be sufficient to observe that 
there is every probability of the physical causes which produced the 
