1885.] in Pennsylvania and New York, 653 
York State (Geol. N. Y., Vol. rv, 1843), and also to that of the 
Geological Survey of Canada, 1863, will show that no outcrop of 
the Niagara is represented within a hundred miles of Kingston, 
the color representing that group ceasing near Utica, while the 
Lower Helderberg continues and underlies the town. It is hard 
to resist the conclusion that we have here an instance of correct 
stratigraphy overruled by incorrect paleontology, and that so far 
from its occurring only in the Niagara this is an example in Vew 
York State itself of the occurrence of Halysites in the Lower 
Helderberg limestone.’ 
V. 
From the facts and arguments here set forth the general con- 
clusion must follow that all attempts to confine the range of 
species within certain arbitrary lines are attempts that are not 
likely to succeed. The geological record as written in the rocks 
is a record of life. Evolution teaches us that life advanced by 
slow stages from species to species ; that as one died out another 
took its place. Evolution knows nothing of breaks or of hard 
and fast planes of limitation in the range of species. All suc 
planes are indications of imperfection in the geological record, 
perhaps evidence of catastrophes on a small scale, but they are 
no proof of widespread, disaster and destruction. And in propor- 
tion to the advance of our knowledge we must expect, on the 
principles of evolution, to see these breaks one by one disappear, 
and these lines be one after another effaced until the record of the 
rocks is in harmony with the record of life which it represents. 
That this harmony will ever be perfect is unlikely, for the rocks 
will never give up all their dead, but that it will one day be much 
more nearly complete than now is axiomatic, in the face of the 
continual discovery of missing chapters in the history supplying 
missing links in the chain of life. 
The artificial systems of palaontology which have been con- 
structed by the faithful, earnest and devoted labors of the students 
of the science are but temporary. They are invaluable aids to 
the progress of the work, but they are only the means and not 
1 On p. xxiii (G,) an error appears which causes some confusion, “S. ma 
is the earliest spirifer which shows ribs in the medial series (sinus ?), and it recurs 
nearly unchanged in the Subcarboniferous Chester limestone of the West.” & 
macropleura, as may be seen by looking at Professor Hall’s figures (Pal. N. Y., Vol. 
11, Pl. 27), has no ribs in the medial sinus. Nor does it recur nearly in 
the Chester li e of the West. 
VOL. XIX,—NO, VII. 43 
