398 Sir Roderick L Murchisonh 



BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. 



Meeting at Manchester, September, 1861. 



{From the Times of September^ llth.) 



The following very interesting Address was delivered by Sir 

 Roderick Murchison as President on opening the Geological Sec- 

 tion : — 



" Although I have had the honour of presiding over the geolo- 

 gists of the British Association at several previous meetings since 

 our first gathering at York, now 30 years ago, I have never been 

 called upon to open the business of this section with an address; 

 this custom having been introduced since I last occupied the 

 geological chair at Glasgow, in 1856. 



" The addresses of my immediate predecessors, and the last 

 anniversary discourse of the President of the Geological Society 

 of London, have embraced so much of the recent progress of our 

 science in many branches, that it would be superfluous on my 

 part to go again over many topics which have been already well 

 treated. 



" Thus it is needless that I should occupy your time by allud- 

 ing to the engrossing subjects of the most recent natural opera- 

 tions with which the geologist has to deal, and which connect 

 his labours with those of the ethnoloo^ist. On this head I Will 

 only say that, having carefully examined the detrital accumula- 

 tions forming the ancient banks of the river Somme in France, I 

 am as complete a behever in the commixture in that ancient allu- 

 vium, of the works of man with the reliquae of extinct animals, as 

 their meritorious discoverer, M. Boucher de Perthes, or as their 

 expounders, Prestwnch, Lyell and others. I may however ex- 

 press my gratification in learning that our own country is now 

 aff'ording proofs of similar intermixture both in Bedfordshire, 

 Lincolnshire, and other counties, and possibly at this meeting we 

 may have to record additional evidences on this highly interest- 

 ing topic. 



"But I pass at once from any consideration of these recent 

 accumulations, and indeed of all Tertiary rocks ; and as a brief 

 space of time only is at my disposal, I will now only lay before 

 you a concise retrospect of the progress which has latterly 

 been made in the development of one great branch of our sci- 

 ence. I confine myself then, to the consideration of those primeval 

 rocks with which my own researches have for many years been 



