400 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
Iiitlicrlo referred Lo I lie Old Red, or Devonian t'onmitiou, but now ascertained to 
(■oiitaiii scvcnd reptilliau forms, of so liisj-li an organization as to raise a doubd 
in tiic minds of many geolog-ists wiietiicr so old a place in the series can cor- 
rectly be assigned to it." 
Sir lloDEKicK I. MmicnisoN delivered a discourse " On the Geological 
Structure and Order of the Older Rocks in the Northern Counties of Scot- 
hind," in which he explained the ])rogress which had been made in the classifi- 
cation of the rocks of scdiuientary origin hi Seothind. He alluded to the great 
leaders of Scottish geology, llutton, Playfair, and Hail, and his inunediate pre- 
decessors, Jameson, M'Culloch, and others, and showed to how great an extent 
the chief point on which he was to insist — the metaniorphisui of sedimentary 
strata of various ages into crystalline rocks — had been al)ly illustrated by Hut- 
ton himself. After his day, however, mineralogy chiefly occupied the mmds of 
geologists, and comparatively little progress was made for some years in 
geology as at ))rescnt cultivated. With William Smith, however, a new era 
arose in England, and the proofs which that sagacious man brouglit forward to 
show that each sedimentary formation was characterized by organic remains 
pecidiar to it, and that there existed a regular order of superposition from the 
okler to the younirer strata, were the true f(nuidations or keystones of modem 
geology. Sir Roderick then gave a very full account of his researches in the 
northern counties of Scotland, and concluded by calling the attention of the 
meeting to the ])rogrcss which was being made by the Geological Smwey of 
(jreat Britain under his direction, and under the special management in the 
held of his friend Professor Ramsay. Exhibiting certain sheets of maps, on 
the six-inch scale, of the counties of Edinburgh, Haddington, and Linlithgow, 
which explained the outcrop of the coal and limestone of these tracts, he 
trusted that the staff of geological surveyors at present allotted to Scotland 
wouhl be soon augmented, and in that case he hoped to live to see the day, if 
maps were oidy provided, when all the geology of Aberdeenshire and the north 
of Scotland might really be worked out with accuracy. The present effort was 
chiefly conlined to the ap})lication of recognized general ]irineiples of elassifica- 
tion to the elucidation of the order of the older rocks of the Highlands ; and 
nothing more could be attem])tcd untUthe country possessed maps, the north of 
Scotland being almost the only couutry in E\irope without an accurate map, a 
melancholy fact, on which he insisted a quarter of a century ago, when the As- 
sociation met in Edinburgh in 1881. On that occasion the Association, at his 
recjuest, memorialized tlie then Government ; and this state of matters was 
t)cnig rajjidly ^\iped away as regards all the tracts to the south of the 
Grampians ; and he hoped that the skill and energy of his friend Colonel James 
and the otiieers under him would be so warmly sup))ortcd l)y Parliament and 
the public that Scotland would have before long a really good topographical 
map, without which no practically useful geological results could be worked 
out. Sir Roderick concluded his addi'css by impressing ujion the minds of those 
auditors who were not geologists the nature of the great difference between the 
formerly accepted notions of the order and ccpiivalents of the older rocks of the 
north of Scotland, and those which he desired to establish by his reform, by 
pointing to two generalized diagrams. One of these, representing the old 
notions, exhibited a great central mass of rocks, termed gneiss, mica schist, 
quartz-rocks, with granites, ]iorphyrics, &c., flanked both on the east and the 
west coasts by Old Red conglomerates and sandstones. The other, on which he 
had previously lectured, exhibited the succession which liad been evolved out 
of I hat which was previously an assemblage of crystalluie rocks, distinguished 
only by their mineral characters, but undefined by their relative position and 
imbedded organii' remains, and in which the rocks of the north-west coast were 
confused with those of the cast coast. 
