206 TRANSACTION? OF THE NORTHERN 



covered with earth. Mr. Loornis grafted in the usual manner of cleft- 

 grafting, tying the stock with a stri}) of cloth or ligature, and covering 

 with earth. 



The President appointed Arthur Bryant. vSr., M. B. Spofford, O. B. 

 Galusha, L. Montagu, and Tyler McWhorter, a Committee on Fruits, 

 etc., on Exhibition. 



Committee on State Legislation for the encouragement of Forest- 

 tree planting, Lewis Ellsworth, Arthur Bryant, M. L. Dunlap. 



Mr. H. N. Bliss read the following suggestions on Geology: 



SUGGESTIONS ON GEOLOGY. 



BY H. N. BLISS. 



Geologv is to be my subject : from the Greek ge^ the earth, and 

 logos^ discourse. 



Well / will discourse, or talk about it. 



To man, the earth is a great world, and with all his power and skill, 

 it is with great difficultv that the most fortunate can travel and sail around 

 it, and observe its merest outlines. 



The combined skill of all, in their united researches, have more 

 theory than positive knowledge. It is with diffidence that the wisest men 

 speak of primeval times, the whys and the wherefores. They refer it, 

 with its causes, to a higher power. 



Many good men have taken Moses as a scientific writer,and the I-^ible 

 zs the guide to all sciences; ^.w^ believing ///rt'/,they have denounced all op- 

 position to their false theory. Others, seeing those good men and de- 

 fenders of the Bible wrong., have denounced, not only the men, but the 

 Bible itself, as wrong. 



An unhappy controversy has been the consequence. / shall begin 

 with Moses. 



" In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." 



All about the how he did it, — the when he did it, by our blind meas- 

 uring lines, — and why he did not do it sooner^ and a thousand other things 

 that incredulity and curiosity might suggest, /don't know. 



It is enough for me to see the order and fitness of things demands 

 ing a designer, and that God has been able to reveal the history of this 

 world thousands of years in advance, and to demonstrate by his works, the 

 character he has given to himself. 



Moses as a servant was faithful in all his house — -in all the depart- 

 ment that Avas intrusted to him. But Moses" mission was not to teach 

 the science — not even the science of Geology. 



He in prophetic vision, or rather in ecstatic vision, saw things as 

 they passed before him, and his revelation was in reference to the im- 

 pressions, the feelings, and the needs of the great mass of mankind, 

 who were neither scientific men nor philosophers. 



