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PROF. J. LOGAN LOBLEY^ F.G.S., F.R.G.S., ON 



who are not express students of geology. To a student of geology, 

 however, it contains little of anything beyond what he is familiar 

 with ; and it fails to rise much above the text-book way of looking 

 at geological and palaeontological facts. One looks in vain for help 

 from it towards that higher "philosophy," which aims at the 

 correlation of results obtained in that department, with those 

 arrived at in other branches of research, the very raison dj'etre of the 

 Victoria Institute. We find the usual old and stale arguments to 

 support the demand of the mere geologist to make unlimited drafts 

 upon the bank of time, including the fallacy of attempting to 

 compute time-duration from relative thickness of strata (a sort of 

 carpenter's rule method) ; while the argument from the fractional 

 portions of stratified formations or systems of rocks is drawn from 

 too limited an area as to its facts, and seems to overlook the larger 

 factor of the permanence of ocean-basins. The persistency of 

 lower forms and types both in the vegetable and the animal kingdom 

 has long been a common-place of palaeontology ; they remain and 

 abide, while through evolutionary differentiation the fact of advance 

 from the lower to the higher, as to structure and function, is patent 

 enough. No one can well question the potency of the factor of 

 change of environment throughout ; and it is well to emphasise the 

 fact that our data for determining the actual extinction of species 

 is very far from complete as yet. 



Unfortunately, it seems to me, the mind of the author of the 

 paper is insufficiently emancipated from the uniformitarian dogma 

 of the Lyell School, which very few capable geologists are prepared 

 to swear by in the present day. One would like to see the paper 

 permeated a little more with the spirit of what Professor Lapworth 

 has styled the " New Geology," as it has advanced to a large extent 

 under the leadership of the master-mind of Professor Suess of 

 Vienna, at whose feet even men like Sir A. Geikie seem to be 

 willing to sit as disciples. The paper before the Institute seems to 

 practically roll up the pages of the last decade or two of geological 

 progress. It is only through Lyellian spectacles that the author's 

 imagination can see the vision of what he portrays to us with 

 some vividness (on page 104) as having constituted terrestrial scenery 

 in Cambrian times ; a picture far too much overdrawn for Silurian 

 or even biter palaeozoic time, as we may see if we recollect (as some 

 of the master-minds of geology have taught) that there is no 



