BRITISH ASSOCIATION MEETING. 



429 



other counties ; and possibly at this meeting we may have to record additional 

 evidences on this highly interesting topic. 



But I pass at once from any consideration of these recent accumulations, 

 and, indeed, of all tertiary rocks ; and as a brief space of time only is at my 

 disposal, I will now only lay before you a concise retrospect of the progress 

 which lias latterly been made in the development of one great branch of our 

 science. I confine myself, then, to the consideration of those primeval rocks 

 with which my own researches have for many years been most connected, with 

 a few allusions only to metamorphism, and certain metalliferous produc- 

 tions, &c. 



There is, indeed, a peculiar fitness in now dwelling more especially on the 

 ancient rocks, inasmuch as Manchester is surrounded by some of them, whilst, 

 with the exception of certain groups of erratic blocks and drifts, no deposits 

 occur within the reach of short excursions from hence, which are either of 

 secondary or tertiary age. 



Let us, then, take a retrospective view of the progress which has been made 

 in the classification and delineation of the older rocks since the Association 

 first assembled at York, in 1831. At that time, as every old geologist knows, 

 no attempt had been made to unravel the order or characters of the formations 

 which rise from beneath the Old Red Sandstone. In that year Sedgwick was 

 only beginning to make his first inroads into those mountains of North Wales, 

 the intricacies of which he finally so well elaborated, whilst I only brought to 

 that, our earliest assembly, the first fruits of observations in Herefordshire, 

 Brecon, Radnor, and Shropshire, which led me to work out an order which 

 has since been generally adopted. 



At that time the terms of Cambrian, Silurian, Devonian, and Permian were 

 not dreamt of, but acting on the true Baconian principle, their founders and 

 their coadjutors have, after years of toil and comparison, set up such plain 

 landmarks on geological horizons that they have been recognised over many a 

 distant land. Compare the best map of England of the year 1831, or that of 

 Greenough which had advanced somewhat upon the admirable original classifi- 

 cation of our father, William Smith, and see the striking difference between 

 the then existing knowledge and our present acquirements. It is not too 

 much to say that when the British Association first met, all the region on both 

 sides of the Welsh border, and extending to the Irish Channel on the west, was 

 in a state of dire confusion ; whilst in Devonshire and Cornwall many of these 

 rocks which from their crystalline nature were classed and mapped as among 

 the most ancient in the kingdom, have since been shown to be of no higher 

 antiquity than the Old Red Sandstone of Herefordshire. 



As to Scotland where the ancient rocks abound, though their mineral struc- 

 ture, particularly in those of igneous origin, had necessarily been much developed 

 in the country of Hutton, Playfair, Hall, Jameson, and McCulloch, yet the 

 true age of most of its sedimentary rocks and their relations was unknown. 

 Still less had Ireland, another region mainly palaeozoic, received any striking 

 portion of that illustration which has since appeared in the excellent general 

 map of Griffith, and which is now being carried to perfection through the 

 labours of the Geological Survey under my colleague Jukes. If such was our 

 benighted state as regarded the order and characters of the older formations at 

 our first meeting, great was the advance we had made, when at our twelfth 

 meeting we first assembled at Manchester in 1842. Presiding then as I do 

 now over the geological section, I showed in an evening lecture how the palaeo- 

 zoic rocks of Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous age, as well as those rocks 

 to which I had assigned the name of Permian, were spread over the vast region 

 of Russia in Europe and the Ural Mountains. What, then, are some of the 

 main additions which have been made to our acquaintance with the older rocks 

 in the British Isles since we last visited Manchester ? 



