STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 177 



with water, and now with wind, as if designing to throw her into a fit 

 of choHc and extort the secrets of nature from her by torture. But she 

 don't confess. Let any one tiiink this very simple matter through, and 

 he will find one single, simple cause, which, like the great cause of gravity, 

 is in itself alone adequate to account for the fact that marks of polar ice- 

 bergs are found under the Equator; while tropical products are every- 

 where found strewed about the poles: simply because the poles must 

 have been where the Equator now is, and vice versa, perhaps many 

 times, and will be again. And as the equatorial diameter of the earth is 

 about twenty-six miles longer than the polar diameter, this simple cause 

 alone would, in these changes, whelm all parts of the polar earth under 

 water, some thirteen miles deep, did the solid earth retain its shape in 

 the process; just as we now see all the European side of the globe 

 becoming warmer, and sinking, as it is said, relatively to the waters; that 

 it is dipping under t/ietfi, in the progress of its advance toward 

 the Equator; while other parts are rising or moving in an opjDOsite 

 direction. 



But the solid parts of the globe, under this prodigious, perpetual 

 strain, can not bold their place. The strain generates heat; heat gener- 

 ates and inllames gases, and breeds earthquakes, volcanoes, and all that 

 perpetual train of phenomena by which the old crust of the globe is 

 broken up and new mountains and islands raised, as well as old ones 

 submerged, till the whole surface becomes re-adjusted to its perpetually 

 changing new conditions. True, an entire polar revolution may not be 

 attained in millions of years, but it is bound to come in time, if like 

 causes continue to produce like effects. 



And in these apparent catastrophes (but in fact as regular a progress 

 of simple law as the return of night and day), new mountain ridges will 

 be thrown up, new wastes and sand deserts formed, new changes and 

 conditions of climate made, as much more potent than any simple 

 denudation of the earth of trees, as these mighty, perpetual, and irre- 

 sistible forces are greater than the simple power of the woodman's axe. 

 I think, therefore, that when we ascribe all these mighty changes in 

 the past, in the great deserts of the continents, to simple changes in the 

 forests, our cause is too narrow, although I agree fully with all that has 

 been said, or can be said of the immense importance of our planting 

 trees to ameliorate our climate, as a practical measure, so far as our feeble 

 endeavors can be made to go; still these higher, mighty causes will go 

 on, and over which human beings have no control. The earth will 

 continue to complete its destinies of revolution and change, of growth 

 and progress, as sure and certain as the growth of an animal or vegetable, 

 though by a law more terribly vast and resistless to earth and all its varied 

 destinies and races. 



Mr. Douglass and Dr. Spalding followed with interesting remarks, 

 which, however, the Secretary was unable to take down. 



Dr. Hull, State Horticulturist, then read the following paper on 

 Peaches, illustrating the same on the blackboard, and making explanatory 

 remarks: 17 



