116 Anniversary Address to the 
the regulation of their organization by the law of para- 
morphosis. : 
The stratigraphical distribution of the Nummulites is espe- 
cially of interest to the geologist. As compared with the 
grand scale of epochs; their reign was short, but it was well- 
marked and compact, and offers but one more proof to the 
thousands now known towards the demonstration of the 
unity of time-areas of natural genera—facts that should make 
us Strongly hesitate before admitting the value of apparent 
and daily-decreasing exceptions, and that should give us fresh 
hope of the future attainment of a knowledge of the grand 
laws regulating life in its relations to time, and fresh faith 
in the biological section of the foundations of geology. The 
Nummulites characterize a portion, not the whole, of the 
tertiary epoch. Though once, and not many years ago, 
Nummulites were regarded to be as probably indicative of 
the cretaceous date of a formation as of its tertiary place, 
it would now appear that, between the nummulitic tertiaries 
and true cretaceous strata, deposits intervene, whose fauna 
and flora are such that we must regard them as of tertiary 
age. A most interesting and important feature of these de- 
posits, traceable in the north-west of Europe, the south of 
France, in Savoy, in Switzerland, along the southern slopes 
of the Alps, in Istria, and even in India, is, that in numerous 
localities they exhibit evidences of a terrestrial origin, marked 
by the presence of coal, often accompanied by lacustrine 
shells, and sometimes by fresh-water limestones. In facts of 
this kind we may get at the true explanation of the break be- 
tween the cretaceous and tertiary faunas, without having re- 
course to prodigious cataclysms or paroxysmal elevations of 
mountain chains, which, if they did occur, as might have 
been the case, could have made. far less impression on the 
distribution of animal and vegetable life, except in the im- 
mediate vicinity of the convulsion, than slow and almost im- 
perceptible changes affecting gradually the disposition of the — 
geography of a wide-spread area. 
“The dial moves, and yet it is not seen,’’ paradoxically 
writes an old poet. Time cannot progress without change, 
however slow may seem his course. The true measure of the 
extent and importance of a convulsion (as well as of the im-’ 
