XCVIII ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



In regard to the solid sphere, however, its inequaHties are absolutely 

 insignificant. From the summits of the Himalayas and the Andes to the 

 floors of the deepest oceans, they are all included in a mere skin. This skin, 

 in pi'oportion to the lithosphère, is no thicker than is that of an ajiple or 

 an orange to its interior, or that of an animal to its body. The processes 

 and the results in both cases ai-e analogous — an exterior skin becoming 

 ridged and corrugated through seeking to accommodate itself to a slowly 

 desiccating and diminishing interior. The simile is old and often used, 

 but it seems to me it has not been followed out to its ultimate conclu- 

 sion — that in it lies the primary cause of both elevation and depression, 

 or ridges and furrows, hills and valleys. The wrinkles on the animal or 

 vegetable cuticle are large in proiiortion as compared with those of the 

 lithosphère, and the comparison may be aptly enlarged to include the 

 pimples, the boils and the blisters which represent — due allowance being 

 made for the ditterence between organic or living and inorganic or dead 

 matter — the volcanic emanations of the litliosphere. 



If in the foi'egoing remarks I have by chance given rise in the minds 

 of some of my hearers to a new idea, of which an eminent writer stated 

 there was ''nothing so })ainful," or if 1 have hurt anybody's feelings, I 

 must apologize to those who feel it so ; my only excuse must be my con- 

 viction of its truth. 



As regards feelings, my old colleague, Jukes, once wrote to a friend : 

 'Tmast say I do not fully understand and appi'eciate men having feel- 

 ings on such jDoints. It is the oddest and most inexplicable thing to me 

 that any one should be annoyed or feel hurt as if it were a personal 

 injury to himself. Surely any man who is above a spoilt child in such a 

 matter would be more glad that the truth should be arrived at than 

 sorry that he himself should be shown to have fallen involuntarily into 

 error." I coi'dially agree in these sentiments. 



In seeking truth, which should be the (mlj^ aim of science, author- 

 itj»-, orthodoxy, jealousy, partisanship, expediency, power, profit, pay 

 and feelings should be rigidly excluded. Such considerations belong 

 to the arena of politics and pink [tills. They are all legitimate in politi- 

 cal and mercantile matters, but arc quite out of place and unworthy 

 when introduced into the domain of science. 



In the foregoing my desire, as alread}^ stated, has not been to advance 

 any new theory, but to record m}' own views on the theories of others, 

 and to state how far these seem to agree or to disagree with the facts, 

 which can be seen and studied and interpreted, not under the wholly 

 insufficient though highly useful aid of the microscope and of the (chem- 

 ical laboratory, alone or together, but chiefly by the rocks themselves, as 

 exposed in all quarters of the earth, in mountain, hill and dale, river, cliff 

 and precipice, where truth alone is to be found, and of which my friend 

 Jukes's biographer wrote : 



