president’s address. 
205 
recent ones, have within the last few years clearly demonstrated 
the fact that underlying the Cambrians, unconformable with 
them, in some places in contact with them, in others with 
more recent rocks, is what he calls an Archaic formation, con¬ 
sisting of sedimentary and partly of volcanic deposits. 
It would manifestly be beyond the limits of this address 
to enter minutely into a description of this part of the subject. 
Those who purpose joining the geological excursion to-morrow 
will have an opportunity of seeing with their own eyes the 
structure, the framework as it were, of the county. They 
will observe the ridge of hills called the Longmynd, running 
N.E. and S.W., which are composed of Cambrian rocks. 
These have, towards the west, thrown off the Llandeilo or 
lower Silurian, which rest on them conformably, and, by a 
huge fault on the east, are brought into contact with the more 
recent Caradoc or Bala formation, from which a regular 
succession of the Silurian up to the old red sandstone and on 
to the carboniferous and coal measures in the Clee Hills can 
be traced. The evidences of the Archaean, or Pre-Cambrian, 
to which I have alluded, are more obscure and will not come 
under your notice, but for those who elect to go on the 
Wroxeter expedition I would call their attention to a very 
remarkable exposure of what Dr. Callaway has now proved to 
be an equivalent of the Tremadoc series, a formation which, 
underlying the Llandeilo, had been supposed to be entirely 
absent on the east of the Longmynds. This is well exposed 
in Sliineton Brook, and is replete with fossils, the chief of 
which is a large trilobite, the Ogygia Homfrayi, which is found 
in a very perfect condition. 
In a tract which has been so thoroughly explored for several 
years past as this has, it is not to be expected that many new 
forms can now be discovered ; nearly every quarry and section 
has been carefully searched, and we must wait forfresh exposures 
to add to the list of fossil remains that we now possess. But 
that this listis far from exhausted is proved by the extraordinary 
number of entirely new forms, especially of starfish , Pterygoti 
and Ceratiocaris, which were brought to light a few years ago in 
a very small area, at a place called Church Hill, near Leint- 
wardine. The fact that the accidental opening of a quarry 
at any point over so large an area may at any moment reveal 
so great a number of entirely new genera and species may well 
impress our minds with the imperfection of the record of the 
continuity of organic life, which has been so forcibly pointed 
out and insisted on by Sir C. Lyell and Mr. Darwin. It is 
often asserted triumphantly, as a crushing answer to the 
evolution hypothesis, that the absence of the links which 
unite, e.g ., an orthoceras of the Palieozoic era with an ammonite 
