bound to believe that new ones have made their appearance in this world in 
some way or other since the first beginning of creation, and that some old 
ones have passed away. N o one who knew geology practically would deny that, 
Mr. Reddie. — Professor Huxley attributes these apparently new creations 
to migration. 
Mr. Warington. — And now may I notice another point of Mr. Wheat- 
ley’s paper with reference to tropical plants and animals to be found in 
old strata, and which required a tropical climate and a vertical sun ? Mr. 
Wheatley says, — 
“ They are the forms of a tropical land. How then came they into these 
climates 1 for sure it is they neither do nor could flourish here now. What 
is there wanting wherewith we cannot supply them ? There must be some- 
thing. So there is, — a vertical sun. According to the distribution of the 
sun’s glorious rays, so is vegetation, so is animal. 
“ It has been customary to account for climatal changes chiefly by atmo- 
spheric alterations, brought about by the great currents of the ocean taking 
a new course, by sea usurping the place of land, or land that of sea. But 
with our northern sun, alterations could never account for the lion and tiger 
in our forests, nor the palms and tree-ferns of the tropics on our uncongenial 
soil. Hitherto, every change of surface on the globe has been attributed to 
upheavals and subsidences— an upward and downward movement in the 
same spot — even to the reversing large tracts of country. And the geological 
mind has been satisfied with it — has given its best attention to it — has become 
saturated with it — has assumed hypotheses, and drawn inferences, very much 
to its own satisfaction ; — children of imagination, bright and delusive. 
“We can understand the sudden coming on of an icy period. Let the 
gulf stream be deflected from our shores, and a raising of the land take place 
— a climate might be produced wherein life must give way under its in- 
tensely glacial aspect. Ice and snow which no summer’s sun could melt — or 
whose rigour could be even mitigated — would reign undisputed. But so 
long as our latitude is unchanged, how can we have the heat of Bengal, the 
burning plains, the steaming jungles ? How enjoy the pleasures and pay 
the penalties of those districts where lurk beast and reptile of surpassing 
beauty, and where vegetation rises in all its grandeur ? Where else is this 
to be found 1 Where else ? here, under our Very feet are buried races of the 
tropics. We see it in multitudes of shells ; we see it in vast numbers of 
animals ; we see it in trees, having at this hour their roots in the very soil 
in which they grew luxuriantly under warmer skies, showing the impossibi- 
lity of their having arrived where we find them by any accidental occurrence 
— any convulsion of nature. Long is it since the beams of a sun which did 
this have ceased to visit our land.” 
The whole argument proceeds on the assumption that those tropical plants 
are the same as those which now flourish in tropical lands. I believe that is 
not so 
Captain Fishbourne. — Surely that is not Mr. Wheatley’s argument. 
The Chairman. — I think it is scarcely Mr. Wheatley’s view. What I 
understand him to mean is that those plants could not have flourished except 
under a vertical sun. 
Mr. Warington. — It struck me that he meant they were the same tropical 
plants. His language is ambiguous, and I suppose I have been mistaken — — 
The Chairman. — He goes on then to refer to Mr. Evan Hopkins’s idea of 
the change of surface. 
