530 



THE GEOLOGIST 



■whilst pledging themselves to the as yet unproved empiric method of Natural 

 Selection, retard the "rapid and right progress" of zoology, unmindful of the 

 Baconian warning that " knowledge, whilst it lies in aphorisms and observations, 

 remains in a growing state ; but when once fashioned into methods, though it 

 may be farther polished, illustrated, and fitted for use, it no longer increases in 

 bulk and substance." 



The study of the palasontological and biological sciences has revolutionized 

 modern knowledge. The attention to system and detail, which savans of a past 

 generation so carefully bestowed upon animals and plants, is now producing 

 its good fruits, and the confused mass of facts and observations which have 

 been collected is now giving place to wide and comprehensive generalizations. 

 The mind of modern scientific men has been " slowly and insensibly 

 withdrawn from imaginary pictures of catastrophes and chaotic confusion, such 

 as had haunted the imagination of the early cosmogonists. Numerous proofs 

 have been discovered of the tranquil deposition of sedimentary matter, and the 

 slow and successive development of organic life." He who has studied the sub- 

 ject with care, quits it with the consciousness that he has learnt the important 

 lesson that, however specialized and modified man's structure, he still retains 

 within him the remnants of the old primoeval ideai, the old patterns, exemplars, 

 and archetypes of being, in whose perfect image he was originally designed ; 

 however remote in point of time he may be from the earliest incarnation of life 

 on this globe, he still bears traces in his early career of a close analogy to the 

 lowest organized monad ; and, above all, he, from the simple elements of the 

 originally created spinal chord in the lower vertebrata, has developed a complex 

 organ of thought far surpassing that possessed by any other animal form. 

 I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 



Ciiakles Carter Bj.ake, 



GLACIERS IN WALES. 

 By Peofessok A. C. Ramsay, F.G.S. 



In the year 1851 I read a paper before the Geological Society 

 " On the Superficial Accumulations and Surface-markings in North 

 Wales," in which I attempted to show that there had been two glacier 

 epochs in that country, one before, and the other after the deposition 

 of the boulder drift, which was ploughed out of some of the larger 

 valleys by the secondhand smaller set of glaciers; and in a later 

 work on the old glaciers of North Wales, I went further, showing 

 that cold sufficient to form glaciers lasted during the whole time of 

 submergence and emergence, both when the higher mountain-tops 

 stood out of the sea as a cluster ofsmall islands, and afterwards when 

 the whole land rose out of the water. 



The first of these memoirs touched on several subjects not im- 

 mediately connected with the glaciation of Wales, though bearing 

 in a larger sense on the same Geological period, and on the same set 

 of questions. This the Council of the Geological Society decided not 

 to print in their Journal, on the ground that it was too speculative — 

 an opinion with which, in a great measure. I now coincide. One 



