PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 
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I must commence by thanking this Society for the honour they have done 
me in electing me their President—an honour I should have been loth to 
accept had I thought it was intended as a compliment, originating only in 
kindly personal feeling, or had I not had an opportunity of stating clearly 
how little time I could give to the workings of the Society ; but yet, an 
honour and a duty I gladly accept, if you accept me only as a hard worker 
in an adjoining field; busy from morning to night in planting and cultivat- 
ing young shoots of very various stocks, to be distributed freely all over 
the world from year to year, and therefore glad to compare notes with you 
now and then as to what soils have been broken—what remain unturned ; 
glad to bring before you from time to time the fruits of labour gathered 
elsewhere. 
I notice that the subjects treated of by the Society are grouped under four 
heads—Botany, Zoology, Geology, and Natural Philosophy. Now, the pro- 
gress of Geology may be taken as, to @ great extent, a fair test of progress in 
those other branches of science, and I have therefore thought it not 
inappropriate to offer you, first, a few remarks on the subject which I 
have made my special study, drawing more particular attention to the 
points of connection between it and the other studies which we hope to 
carry on together here. 
Geology treats of the mode of formation of the earth’s crust, and of the 
changes it has undergone. There are two ways of approaching the subject, 
distinct, yet so interlaced, that one must often cross the other ; and those 
who generally follow one had often better leave it and follow the other 
fora time. We may treat the crust of the earth as dead matter. Take the 
mountain mass, the Righi: there we have old pebble beds 8,000 feet thiek, 
which are but the hardened shingle which was deposited round ancient 
Alps. Take one pebble, it may be a crystalline rock: the mineralogist 
tells you the component minerals, perhaps by form, hardness, and other 
tests irrespective of their composition. Take one mineral and show it to 
the chemist, and he will name the elements which compose it, and perhaps 
the mineralogist and chemist may tell you under what conditions of heat, 
pressure, and exchanging solvents, these combinations are now known to be 
produced. Still further we may enquire: the physicist will tell us of laws 
of combination and behaviour of their elements, which they say can best 
be understood by forming a conception of matter as made up by little 
particles or centres of form, whirling, bounding, and re-bounding within 
prison walls, till nature, or the chemist, turns the key and sets them free, 
