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The next important step in our knowledge of the geology 

 of the islands was the commencement of the Government 

 Geological Survey ; the island first examined being Trini- 

 dad. The determination of the tertiary rocks of the island 

 was base upon what had been previously published by Mr. 

 Carrick Moore. But the classification thus arrived at was 

 imperfect. This fault was in great measure due no doubt 

 to the very little attention paid to the fossils ; the object of 

 the survey being principally economic and practical geolo- 

 gy. Still, a useful warning may be drawn from this, as to 

 the impossibility of obtaining correct views without the aid 

 of the higher sciences. 



The greatest share of the verification of the Caribean 

 Miocene fell to the lot of Dr. Duncan, who described the 

 rich series of fossil corals from the tertiary beds of Antigua, 

 Jamaica, Haiti and other islands Dr. Duncan's elaborate 

 and highly successful investigations enabled him to confirm 

 the previous generalizations on the age of the Caribean 

 Miocene, and to perceive and illustrate the applicabilit}' of 

 the theory of the migration of organized beings to the case 

 in question. His researches tended to give a greater degree 

 of probability to the hypothesis of the tertiary Atlantis on 

 which Heer had labored, and to the support of which the 

 arguments of Forbes, Godwin-Austen and Darwin had lent 

 such force. 



The next advance in West-Indiau geology was due to 

 the zeal and industry of Mr. Barrett, Director of the Geo- 

 logical Survey of the West-Indies. That naturalist collected 

 a fine series of remains from the Jamaican tertiaries ; but 

 before he could describe them he lost his life in diving for 

 those living organisms a knowledge of which was necessan 

 to enable him to judge accurately as to the true nature of 



