ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS TO THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY 513 
facts has been so greatly increased, and the range of biological 
speculation has been so vastly widened, by the researches of the 
geologist and the paleontologist, that it is to be feared there are 
naturalists in existence who look upon geology as Brindley re- 
garded rivers. “Rivers,” said the great engineer, “were made to 
feed canals ;” and geology, some seem to think, was solely created 
to advance comparative anatomy. 
Were such a thought justifiable, it could hardly expect to be 
received with favour by this assembly. But it is not justifiable. 
Your favourite science has her own great aims independent of all 
others; and if, notwithstanding her steady devotion to her own 
progress, she can scatter such rich alms among her sisters, it should 
be remembered that her charity is of the sort that does not im- 
poverish, but “ blesseth him that gives and him that takes.” 
Regard the matter as we will, however, the facts remain. Nearly 
40,000 species of animals and plants have been added to the Sys- 
tema Nature by paleontological research. This is a living popu- 
lation equivalent to that of a new continent in mere number ; equi- 
valent to that of a new hemisphere, if we take into account the 
small population of insects as yet found fossil, and the large pro- 
portion and peculiar organisation of many of the Vertebrata. 
But, beyond this, it is perhaps not too much to say that, except 
for the necessity of interpreting paleontological facts, the laws of 
distribution would have received less careful study: while few com- 
parative anatomists (and those not of the first order) would have 
been induced by mere love of detail, as such, to study the minutia 
of osteology, were it not that in such minutie lie the only keys 
to the most interesting riddles offered by the extinct animal 
world. 
These assuredly are great and solid gains. Surely it is matter 
for no small congratulation that in half a century (for palzon- 
tology, though it dawned earlier, came into full day only with 
Cuvier) a subordinate branch of biology should have doubled the 
value and interest of the whole group of sciences to which it 
belongs. 
But this is not all. Allied with geology, paleontology has estab- 
lished two laws of inestimable importance: the first, that one and 
the same area of the earth’s surface has been successively occupied 
by very different kinds of living beings ; the second, that the order 
of succession established in one locality holds good, approximately, 
in all. 
The first of these laws is universal and irreversible ; the second is 
VOL. II LL 
