60 PKOCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



I do not, of course, for one moment wish to suggest that it is 

 practicable, or even desirable, to attempt an extension of the con- 

 ventional use of the terms "life" and "organization." But I do 

 think that it is of the first importance that we should clearly 

 recognize the fact that the distinctions between living and non- 

 living matter are not essential and fundamental ones, that cycles of 

 change exactly similar in almost every respect to those occurring 

 in the animal and vegetable kingdoms are equally characteristic of 

 the mineral kingdom — though in the latter they are more difficult 

 to follow on account of the extreme slowness with which they take 

 place. 



When this great truth is fully recognized, the separation of the 

 Biological and the Mineralogical Sciences will be at an end, and 

 Mineralogy will begin to profit by that revolution in thought and in 

 method which has already done so much for her sister sciences. 



The temporary divorce between Biology and Mineralogy has 

 arisen, not from any inherent differences between their aims, their 

 methods, or the objects of which they treat, but from the circumstance 

 that while the former has in the last half- century advanced with 

 the stride of a giant, the latter has during the same period tot- 

 tered on with the feeble steps of infancy. Mineralogy is still in the 

 " pupa stage " of its development ; it is a classificatory science, with 

 its methods imperfect, its taxonomy undeveloped, and its very 

 notation undefined. Its cultivators, absorbed in the Sisyphean task 

 of establishing new species and varieties, too often treat their science, 

 with all its glorious possibilities, as though it were but akin to postage- 

 stamp lore ! 



How is it, we may profitably ask, that the Biological sciences 

 have made such prodigious advances, while the Mineralogical ones 

 have lagged so far behind ? "We must ascribe the result, I believe, 

 to two causes : — 



In the first place, improvements in the construction of the micro- 

 scope, and more especially the perfecting of methods of study by 

 means of thin sections, have immeasurably enlarged the biologist's 

 field of observation ; Histology and the cell-theory, Embryology with 

 all its suggestiveness, and many important branches of Physiological 

 research, must have languished, if, indeed, they ever saw the light, 

 but for the aid afforded by the microscopical methods of inquiry. 



In the second place, the growth of Geological and Palseontological 

 knowledge has been the leading factor in that profound revolution 

 in Biological ideas which, sweeping before it the superstition of fixity 



