granite from Cumberland are scattered over the moors of Yoikabire and Sontb 

 Shropshire ; — similar masses from the Highlands of Scotland have thus been, 

 scattered over the plains of Mid- Lothian ; granites from Norway lie on the flats 

 of Denmark ; and huge boulders from Lapland and Finland repose in the plains. 

 of Eussia. If time permitted many similar illustrations might be given, but 

 it is not necessary. 



From causes now in operation, therefore, in other parts of the globe, w» 

 may learn that to the existence of a glacial epoch in this particular district 

 we must attribute the presence of these conglomerate boulders on Llandrindod 

 common. They are ice-transported, and were deposited by that great northern 

 current of a glacial sea, which has scored our mountain sides with the masses 

 of ice it brought down, and has left so many traces of its ice-bearing powers 

 in the countless other boulders it has conveyed from immense distances. The 

 deposit of marine shells in the stratified rocks ; the existence of these ocean- 

 derived mineral springs ; and the presence of these conglomerate boulders, all 

 alike point to a time when the hills above the Pump House stood by the sea side, 

 and when this shelving common was the foreshore. The icebergs carrying these 

 very boulders stranded on this shore, those lightly laden in the shallow water, 

 but those bearing the heaviest burden in the deeper water, and thus, as you see, 

 this large boulder holds a low position on the common. If you reject the 

 evidence of these inanimate rocks — if you stUl refuse to believe that these health- 

 giving springs are due to the salts of an ancient sea — what can you say to the 

 testimony of those organic remains which your hammers knock out of the 

 Llandeilo Flags after an imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of years ? How 

 is it possible to explain the presence of the remains of those trilobites and 

 gastoropods, and numerous other shells so commonly found throughout the 

 Silurian system, and whose occupants could only live in sea water ? But I don't 

 ask you to explain, rather I counsel you to observe and to study the facts before 

 your eyes, and leave the complete solution of the mystery to that master-mind, 

 to which the key may perchance hereafter be vouchsafed. If you still persist 

 in asking, as the poet has well said it, 



What sea, receding from what former world, 

 Consigned these tribes to stony sepulchres ? 



I leave the poet to answer you — 



Bewildered sage ! proclaim thy Wisdom foUy, 

 And where thy Reason fails let Faith begin. 

 The rocks have sacred secrets of their own. 

 And teach the wise humility and praise. 



Let the inhabitants of Llandrindod, or rather tho lord of the manor of this 

 common, preserve this fine Boulder henceforth from the roadmaker's hammer, 

 and it will ever be an object of the highest interest to scientific visitors. 



The address was listened to throughout with very great attention, and was 

 much applauded at its close. It was read clearly and with much earnestness, 

 and seemed to excite even greater interest amongst the Llandrindod audience 

 than with the ordinary club members. 



