British Association, Edinburgh Meeting — Lapioorth. 227 
The doctrine of organic evolution would always have remained a 
metaphj'^sical dream had geology not given the time in which the evolu- 
tion could be accomplished. The ability of present causes to bring 
about slow and cumulative changes in the species is, to all intents and 
purposes, a biological application of Button's ideas with respect to the 
origin of the geological formations. Darwin was a biological evolution- 
ist, because he was first a uniformitarian geologist. Biology is pre- 
eminent to-day among the natural sciences, because its younger sister, 
Geology, gave it the means. 
But the inevitable consequence of the work of Darwin and his col- 
leagues was that the centre of gravity, so to speak, of popular regard and 
public controversy was suddenly shifted from stratigraphlcal geology to 
biology. Since that day stratigraphlcal geology, to its great comfort and 
advantage, has gone quietly on its way unchallenged, and all its more 
recent results have, at least by the majority of the wonder-loving public, 
been practically ignored. 
Indeed, to the outside observer it would seem as if stratigraphica.l ge- 
ology for the last thirty years had been practically at a standstill. The 
startling discoveries and speculations of the brilliant stratigraphists of 
the end of the last century and first half of the present forced the ge- 
ology of their day into the very front rank of the natural sciences, and 
made it perhaps the most conspicuous of them all in the eyes of the 
world at large. Since that time, however, their successors have been 
mainly occupied in completing the work of the great pioneers. The 
stratigraphical geologists themselves have been almost, wholly occupied 
in laying down upon our maps the superficial outlines of the great 
formations, and working out their inter-relationships and subdivisions. 
At the present day the young stratigraphical student soon learns that all 
the limits of our great formations have been laid down with accuracy 
and clearness, and finds but little to add to the accepted nomenclature 
of the time. 
Our palaeontologists also have equally busied themselves in working 
out the rich store of the organic remains of the geological formations, 
and the youthful investigator soon discovers that almost every fossil he 
is able to detect in the field has already been named, figured, and de- 
scribed, and its place in the geological record more or less accurately 
fixed. 
In France, in Germany, in Norway, Sweden, and elsewhere, in Canada 
and in the United States, work as thorough and as satisfactory has been 
accomplished, and the local development of the great stratified forma- 
tions and their fossils laid down with detail and clearness. 
3Iany an unfiedged, but aspiring geologist, alive to these facts, and 
contrasting the well-mapped ground of the present time with the virgin 
lands of the days of the great pioneers, finds it hard to stifle a feeling of 
keen regret that there are nowadays no new geological worlds to con- 
quer, no new systems to discover and name, and no strange and unex- 
pected faunas to unearth and bring forth to the astonished light of day. 
The youth of stratigraphical geology, with all its wonder and freshness. 
