Vol. 59.] ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OE THE PRESIDENT. lxxvii 



ascending series of the geological formations. They have thus a 

 geological arrangement and grouping as inevitable and necessary 

 as the biological one. While we grant that the biologist has not 

 only a right but almost an obligation to place in its systematic 

 biological position in his museum an example of every species 

 hitherto discovered by the geologist, it is equally important for the 

 advancement of science in general that the geologist shall have in his 

 museum a stratigraphical grouping and chronological arrangement 

 of fossil species always available for his geological work. There is a 

 phylogenetic grouping by affinity for which the biologist is constantly 

 striving, and to which he is daily more and more approximating ; 

 but there is also a chronological grouping by' geological position, 

 which for every individual specimen in the palaeontological depart- 

 ment of a geological museum was practically fixed the day when 

 that specimen was collected from a known stratigraphical horizon. 

 "We may rest assured that, year by year, the stratigraphical classifi- 

 cation in our geological museum will become more detailed and more 

 refined. This chronological grouping constitutes a tool with which 

 Geology cannot possibly dispense. Again and again, in the years 

 gone by, the apparent sequence and the known palaeontology have 

 been in conflict as to the true stratigraphical position of local 

 formations, and in every known case hitherto the palseontological 

 side has scored the victory. 



But indeed, if we Geologists were ever to become so benighted as 

 to neglect this detailed sequential classification of the fossils in our 

 museums, the biologists themselves would soon force it upon us for 

 the sake of their own science. Fossils as thus arranged are and 

 can be the only tangible proofs of the chronological order in which 

 the various types and forms of life made their successive appearance 

 on the earth ; and they are in consequence the clearest and most 

 widely accepted evidences of the doctrine of biological evolution. 

 And further, the more minutely they are arranged in strati- 

 graphical detail, and the greater the number of species, varieties, 

 or mutations which are arranged under each horizon, the sooner 

 will biologists have at their command the necessary materials 

 enabling them to solve those great outstanding problems that 

 bear upon the laws which have ruled in the origin, variation, and 

 distribution of species. 



Geology and Geography. — Turning next to the relations between 

 Geography and Geology, we may say, perhaps, that there are no two 



