76 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



fauna and flora in the British Isles may have been contemporaneous 

 with Silurian life in North America and with a Carboniferous fauna 

 and flora in Africa," I think that geologists, with the evidence 

 they have now before them, must take exception to so sweeping a 

 generalization. Finding, as we do, on both sides of the Atlantic the 

 same succession of Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, and 

 Carboniferous strata, containing strikingly representative, if not 

 identical faunas, it is impossible to doubt their general parallelism ; 

 however ready we may be to admit that the migration or develop- 

 ment of new forms of life in the two areas need not have occurred 

 synchronously, and that thus a certain amount of overlapping of 

 the periods represented at distant points by the same system may 

 exist. 



On the other hand, I believe that the study of fossils from remote 

 parts of the Earth's surface has abundantly substantiated Professor 

 Huxley's alternative suggestion that " Geographical provinces and 

 zones may have been as distinctly marked in the Palaeozoic epoch 

 as at present." The ever accumulating mass of evidence seems 

 to me to be all pointing in this direction ; and I confidently 

 anticipate that the palaeontological anomalies which in the past 

 have caused so much doubt and difficulty, will, by the establishment 

 of this principle, receive a full and satisfactory explanation. 



So long ago as 1846 Darwin, in his *' Observations on South 

 America," showed that certain assemblages of fossils presented a 

 blending of characters, which in Europe are only found apart in 

 faunas which are of Jurassic and Cretaceous age respectively. 

 Since that date, the study of the fossil faunas and floras of South 

 Africa, India, Australia, New Zealand, and the Western Territories of 

 North America has furnished an abundance of facts of the same 

 kind, showing that no classification of geological periods can possibly 

 be of world-wide application ; that we must be contented to study the 

 past history of each great area of the Earth's surface independently, 

 and to wait patiently for the evidence which shall enable us to 

 establish a parallelism between the several records. Attempts to 

 set up a universal system of nomenclature or classification of 

 sedimentary rocks are indeed greatly to be deprecated, for if the 

 zoological and botanical distribution of past geological times were at 

 all comparable to that of the present day, any such universal system 

 must be impossible. 



The suggestion made to this Society by Professor Huxley at a 

 somewhat later date is equally valuable and important. Eeferring 



