28 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



11. Investigation of the petrology of sediments in relation to 



neighbouring land-masses, temperature of water, etc. 

 Distribution of minerals from volcanic rocks. The 

 stability of minerals. 



12. Determination in sediments of allothigenous (primary) 



and authigenous (secondary) minerals. The two 

 generations of minerals as indicated by size. The 

 formation of glauconite. 



13. The landing of parties on such islands or places on the 



mainland difficult of access (e.g., the island of Rockall), 

 and collection of specimens. 



14. Considerations of the habitat and migration of organisms. 



The possible evidence of environment yielded by 

 sediments. Relation to lime and other contents of 

 sea- water (lime- secreting habit, etc.). 



The rocks of the earth's crust and their organic remains 

 present problems that may be attacked by biologists and 

 geologists from very different points of view. Both would 

 doubtless now agree with Huxley in his dictum that " The 

 primary and direct evidence in favour of evolution can be 

 furnished only by palaeontology. The geological record, so 

 soon as it approaches completeness, must, when properly 

 questioned, yield either an affirmative or a negative answer : 

 if evolution has taken place, there will its mark be left ; if it 

 has not taken place, there will lie its refutation." 



But in the study of sedimentation, of past environments, 

 and of the evolution of organisms, there is more than this. 

 Suess, in " Das Antlitz der Erde," has summarized the wider 

 conception in the striking sentences which follow. " It is the 

 organic remains, no doubt, which afford us our first and most 

 important aid in the elucidation of the past. But the goal of 

 investigation must still remain in the recognition of those great 

 physical changes in comparison with which the changes in the 

 organic world appear only as phenomena of the second order, 

 as simple consequences." 



