Tlic President's Address. By Henry Woodward. 143 



But leaving the regions of classical and mediaeval myths, and 

 even passing over unnoticed the earlier writers and philosophers — 

 whose observations, although often very good, ended frequently in 

 the fabulous and mysterious, or were intermingled with gross errors 

 resulting from ignorance of astronomical laws and cosmical and 

 chemical effects — we come, in 1669, to the observations of Steno, sl 

 professor of the Padua University, who compared fossil shells with 

 recent, and showed that the two were often specifically the same— 

 that sharks' teeth from the hills of Eome were like those of a 

 shark now living in the Mediterranean. 



The eighteenth century gave birth to many able philosophers 

 and also to many writers having a distorted vision resulting from 

 a firm belief in the literal acceptance of the Mosaic cosmogony, into 

 which they constrained their facts and observations to fit. 



Gesner, a Swiss observer, in 1759, demonstrated, by comparing 

 past physical changes with those now in progress, that elevation of 

 mountains and the wearing away of ravines and valleys must have 

 occupied tens of thousands of years to accomplish. 



[1665-1729.] Br. John Woodward insisted on the theory that 

 all deposits resulted from the Noachian deluge, and that their 

 materials and fossil-contents were arranged by gravitation, the 

 heaviest at the bottom. He did one excellent thing, he founded 

 in Cambridge the Woodwardian chair of geology, which has now 

 become a great centre for the teaching of modern geology, but was 

 originally designed to ensure the delivery of a sermon annually, to 

 confound the doctrines of Dr. Camerarius of Tubingen and all his 

 works, because he differed from the views of Dr. "Woodward. 



Some of the writings of the Italian naturalists at this time were 

 most brilliant and advanced, but the lack of frequent intercom- 

 munication between men of science 150 years ago prevented the 

 wide spread of intellectual ideas. 



Amongst the most able writers in this country (1726-1797) 

 was James Hutton of Edinburgh, whose Theory of the Earth 

 &c. was the foundation of Lyell's Principles of Geology and 

 many other later writings. His views, based on observations, were 

 clear and convincing to all studious minds : — 



" The ruins of an older world are visible in the present struc- 

 ture of our planet ; and the strata which now compose our con- 

 tinents have been once beneath the sea, and were formed out of 

 the waste of pre-existing continents. The same forces are still 

 destroying, by chemical decomposition or mechanical violence, 

 even the hardest rocks, and transporting the materials to the sea, 

 where they are spread out and form new strata analogous to those 

 of more ancient date. Although loosely deposited along the 

 bottom of the ocean, they become afterwards altered and con- 

 solidated by volcanic heat, and then heaved up fractured and 

 ■contorted." 



