A Century of Geology*

THE geological problems of special interest in 1831 are shown by the contributions prepared at the request of the British Association, with first amongst them Conybeare's “Report on the Progress, Actual State, and Ulterior Prospects of Geological Science”. His report summarised the position in general stratigraphy, which was still based on two divisions—the primary and the secondary. The secondary group, thanks to William Smith, had been classified into four systems—the Carboniferous including the Old Red Sandstone, the New Red Sandstone, the Oolitic, and the Cretaceous. All below the Old Red Sandstone was left as the primitive and transition series. The pre-Carboniferous and post-Cretaceous beds were still in confusion, but Conybeare's section from the north of Scotland to the Adriatic near Venice shows that the general succession had been established from the Tertiary to the Carboniferous and Old Red Sandstone.