XCII ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



structioii. Why, then, i would ask. the purely theoretical assumption 

 that no part of this wide but now concealed ocean floor was ever contin- 

 ental land : and why may not its rocks be as diverse and conceal as many 

 biolog-ical treasures as do those which we can examine on the land? 

 Theor}^ alone must be looked to for an answer. Rocks and facts, how- 

 ever, all tend to show that during the millions of years of evolution 

 referred to, the ocean and the land have been, and still are, continuously 

 (duuiii-iiiii- ])laces ; and that the actual truth, as it is in nature and as I 

 hoid it. cannot be more graj.hically expressed than we tind it in Tenny- 

 sons ■• In Memoriam ' : 



" There rolls the deep wliere grew the tree ; 

 O, Earth, wliat changes hast thou seen ! 

 There, where the long street i-oars, hath been 

 The stillness of the central sea. 



" The hills are shadows, and they How 

 From form to form, and nothing stands. 

 They melt like mists; the solid lands 

 Like clouds they shape themselves and go." 



In the above we touch upon the construction and destruction of all 

 the newer formations which are not included in my text ; but as granite 

 and granitoid compounds constitute such enormous areas of continental 

 lands, though in a ])rogressive]y diminishing extent since Archœan times, 

 I propose to make a lew remarks connected with my view of its origin. 



Origin of (îraxite. 



In 1853, forty-three years ago, I commenced to study and trace out 

 in the i\c\d the boundaries of the great granite areas depicted on the 

 geological map of the j)rovince of Victoria, Australia, which you sec 

 before you. Scale, eight miles to one inch. 



Up to that time my ideas of granite were sim])ly those orthodox doc- 

 trines of fusion, intrusion, central heat, upheaval and disturbance. In 

 1854 I called the attention of Profesèor McCoy, then lately arrived in 

 Victoria, to the remarkable, and up to that time, I believe, unrecognized, 

 certainly undepicted and undescribed. rchitions ot the granite to certain 

 strati tied rc^cks. 



'J'he relations as then acce])ted are shown in Jukes's "Maniud," pp. 

 310 and 311, l.Sb"2, and express the theory of intrusion and its obvious 

 consequence, upheaval. The observations made in Australia showed 

 phiinly. Iimwcvcp. the ciitii\' absence of the consequences that ought to 

 have been there, and therefore some defect in the doctrine. 



Later, similar facts were observed in Ireland, and metamorphism was 

 availed of in order to reconcile the theories with the facts. 



Prior to 1862 we find no mention of metamorphic granite, or any 

 localities cited where it had been distinctly shown to be so, without the 



