17 
OctozgR 21st, 1890. 
The winter session commenced with the following paper by the 
Secretary, entitled 
HOW GREAT BRITAIN BECAME AN ISLAND, 
In addition to the general difficulty one experiences in knowing 
how to begin a paper our subject presents another still more serious, 
namely, knowing where to begin. We have to describe how Great 
Britain became an island. How far back in its geographical 
history and development shall we travel to find a starting point ? 
For the land in which we live has literally and actually seen so 
many ‘‘ ups and downs in the world” that we scarcely know how 
to choose. We might commence, and it would be a very good 
starting point, with its condition in what has been styled the Great 
Ice Age, when Great Britain was a group of innumerable islands 
of all forms, heights, and sizes, all swathed in snow and ice. Or 
we could commence with the Coal Age, when it was mostly a 
collection of low-lying swampy areas with a sub-tropical climate ; 
or farther back even to the time when, we are told, “ the earth 
was waste and empty, and darkness lay on the face of the deep.” 
Shall we explore the dark recesses of Time still further, and trace 
in imagination what has happened since the earth was part of a 
huge nebulous mass, out of which they say our Solar System in all 
its beauty has heen evolved? Or with a mind still unsatisfied, 
shall we endeavour with Dr. Croll to picture out how that nebulous 
mass itself was produced. The world is so old. 
I remember reading in one of our leading menthly reviews a few 
years ago an exceedingly interesting history of the noted Victoria 
Cave near Settle, in Yorkshire, in which the last method but one 
was actually followed, and the talented writer described all the 
steps and changes since the nebulous condition of the earth to the 
state of the cave when it was explored by our modern geologists. 
But on the present occasion it will I think be preferable to begin 
somewhat nearer to our own times, at some epoch where we find 
firmer ground upon which to build our descriptions ; and we shall 
probably get a sufficiently clear idea, at least so far as a clear 
idea can be got, by tracing the changes which have occurred 
.during wheat geologists call the Tertiary Age, the latest of 
the three great Life periods into which the physical history 
of the earth has been divided,—that during which (at least 
in our country) all the deposits above the White Chalk 
have been laid down. This White Chalk in England marks 
the close of the great Secondary or Mesozoic Period, and gives us 
