486 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



this age and in this district the economic side of the 

 science naturally possesses the widest interest. 



Indeed, at a meeting of Biologists like the present, there 

 is no necessity for making a defence of, or an apology for, 

 the science of Geology, or to claim for it its natural place 

 and status in any University curriculum, side by side with 

 the science of Biology. Biology and Geology are sisters, 

 and have long been mutual helpers, and it is almost 

 impossible to say which of the two has most benefited 

 by the progress of the other. 



The great biological ideas of evolution in general, of 

 the doctrine of descent, of the survival of the fittest, of the 

 origin and meaning of the great biological regions of the 

 globe, even the prevalent biological opinions of the present 

 days respecting the origin of man himself, are all of them 

 the natural consequences of the great discoveries made by 

 geological science. Without the results arrived at by the 

 geologist, and the proofs of the uninterrupted geological 

 evolution of the past lands and waters of the globe, pre- 

 senting the collection and classification of the fossilized 

 remains of various assemblages of living beings which 

 have successively peopled them, these great biological 

 conceptions might well have originated as intellectual 

 theories, but they would for ever have remained figments 

 of the imagination — reasonable it may be in themselves, 

 but wholly incapable of proof. 



The whole science of biology has attained through 

 geology a grandeur or an immensity undreamt of by the 

 most sanguine of our forefathers. As the discoveries of 

 astronomers have proved that the laws which prevail in 

 this little world of ours rule in all directions through a 

 universe of worlds, as far as man's powers can grasp in an 

 infinity of space, so the discoveries of geology and 

 palaeontology have shown us that the laws and principles 



