BRITISH ASSOCIATION MEETING. 
429 
other counties : and possibly at this meeting we may have to record additional 
evidences on this higiily 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 has 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 comiected, 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 
Greeuough 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 \\'elsh 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 kiugdoDi, 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, Plajfair, 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 Grifiith, 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 ? 
