36 Address of the President. 



the valley of the Somme, now so celebrated by the discovery 

 of flint instruments, the work of man, from above Amiens 

 and below Abbeville to the sea, is filled with peat, in some 

 places above 80 feet in thickness ; and the calculations made 

 by M. Boucher de Perthes give the time for the formation of 

 this thickness of peat to be "so many tens of thousands of 

 years" that even Sir Charles Lyell doubts, and says, " we must 

 hesitate before adopting it as a chronometric scale ;" and he 

 adds, " yet hy multi2Jlying observations of this kind, and bringing 

 one to bear upon and check another, we may eventually succeed 

 in obtaining data for estimating the age of the peaty deposit.'" 

 And it is to the above suggestion that I would wish most espe- 

 cially to direct your attention. Calculations of somewhat 

 similar kinds have been attempted upon unascertained data. 

 The recession of the Falls of Niagara, and the time required 

 for cutting through the rocks between Queenstown and the 

 present position of the Falls ; the growth of coral reefs ; the 

 deposition of the silt in the Delta of the Nile, or in the 

 alluvial plains of the Mississippi, or at the mouths of the 

 great American and Indian rivers, may be attempted to be 

 calciolated, but we have no recorded facts that would enable 

 us to build as certain the time which they would bring out. 

 Peat is under the same conditions, and is formed under very 

 varied circumstances — sometimes in comparatively small 

 basin-like cavities, where much would be carried down from 

 the wash of the sides or watershed around — sometimes a lake, 

 with a vast accumulation of substance carried by its feeders, 

 becomes partially drained,* changes to a marsh, and at last 

 grows peat upon its surface. Similar results would occur by 

 the breaking of some river gorge, which would drain the 

 lake-like expanse in the valley above, and peat accumulates 

 here rapidly, there slowly ; and in these circumstances it is in 

 later times generally found covered by some gravel or fine 



* A lake in England lately drained has twenty-one feet of peaty mud. See 

 also Dowalton Loch, and its sea of peaty mud. 



