1866.] SMALLWOOD — PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 127 



rocky covering of our globe, for a subject of discourse ? I dare 

 not. Their mantle would not fall with graceful folds upon one so 

 incompetent as myself. Our reports and journals bear ample 

 evidence of their united labours and individual researches. Or 

 shall I stroll through the deep forests or over the flowery sod, 

 where once trod the footsteps of a Holmes or a Barnston, one of 

 whom was removed from among us full of years and of honour ; 

 while the other had scarcely entered upon the busy stage of science 

 ere he was called away ? But why should I hesitate to find a 

 suitable theme in the vast domains of science ? Why should I say 

 more ? Ascend with me above the dust, ascend with me far above 

 those sure foundations that were laid in the ages of this our world, 

 far, far gone by ; ascend with me above the clouds, — those cirrous 

 clouds, where the heavens are never obscured, where the atmos- 

 phere is pure and free from mist, — in the balmy but intensely cold 

 regions of space, where our earth, with its lofty mountains and 

 fertile valleys, with its noble mansions and its lovely cottages, is 

 only seen as a small planet ; where our sun itself is dwindled 

 to a twinkling star ; where the starry host is nearly lost from 

 vision, — merged, as it were, into a milky way ; — and where the 

 great girdle of the heavens itself is but a faint nebulous mass. 

 Yet deep even into this immensity of space science has cast its 

 divining rod. 



A Herschel discovered a world eighty times larger than our 

 own, which revolves in its circuit in a long period of time, corres- 

 ponding to more than 80 of our years, ere its curved course is 

 run. Bound this planet, thus removed some eighteen hundred 

 millions of miles, six moons revolving like our own accompany it 

 on its onward and extended course. 



But from this distant world the shout of science was still 

 Onward ! A Le Verrier and an Adams, with a colossal stride, 

 placed one foot, as it were, on our earth, and another on the sur- 

 face of this distant globe, and pointed out the spot where Neptune 

 was to be found, a planet still further removed from us, and whose 

 period of revolution was more than double that of Uranus. But 

 even that planet appears near us when we measure the nearest 

 star that bedecks the vaulted canopy of heaven ; for that is twenty 

 billions of miles distant from our sun. 



If geology marks the progressive development of the rocks on 

 our globe, and counts its periods by millions of years, (for the rocks 

 are but incidents in the earth's history,) surely the astronomer 



