ADDRESS BY MR. MURCHISON. XXXIX 



high station confided to him by his sovereign *. And here we cannot 

 but obsei-ve, that as, with all its mineral wealth, Great Britain is the 

 only country in Europe without a national school of mines, so much 

 the stronger is the call upon the British Association to promote the 

 analysis of every natural phenomenon and useful invention connected 

 with the art of mining. But while we make this appeal, we cannot 

 assemble in this neighbourhood without congratulating the University 

 of Durham on having led the way to the establishment of a school of 

 mines and engineering, in which the principles and knowledge of this 

 branch of science are regularly taught ; and we further feel gratified, 

 that so important a charge has been intrusted to men distinguished for 

 their scientific attainments, including in their numbers one of the earliest 

 promoters of the British Association, and one of its local secretaries at 

 this meeting f. 



In the arrangements of the Association, the sciences of Mineralogy 

 and Chemistry have been united. Such an union may be justified, not 

 merely by its convenience in the distribution of our labours, but by 

 the close alliance which subsists between those sciences, in all that 

 concerns the connexion of chemical composition with crystalline forms, 

 presenting so many remarkable relations of very recent discovery, and 

 leading so rapidly, as Mr. Whewell has, on more than one occasion, 

 so clearly shown, to enlarged views of the true principles of minera- 

 logical qualification. But whilst we fully recognise the connecting 

 links which unite those sciences, we trust that this partial and tempo- 

 rary separation, which the active and somewhat absorbing study of 

 palaBontology has almost necessarily occasioned, will not be of long 

 continuance, and that the laws of crystallization, which constitute its 

 alliance with another science, will in the progress of our knowledge 

 give as much importance to its connexion with the study of the cry- 

 stalline structure of vast masses of the surface of the globe, as in the 

 most searching analysis of its minutest particles. Let not, however, 

 the exclusive advocates of any one theory of the proper relation of 

 those sciences induce us to abandon inquiries so pregnant with re- 

 markable conclusions, and which truly constitute the great basis and 

 framework of modern geology : for the more minute and laborious our 

 investigations, the more certainly do we make out that many rocks 

 which were once supposed to be made up of inorganic matter, are in 

 truth composed of animal remains. And do we not look for the 

 presence among us of a distinguished philosopher of Berlin, who, 

 above all others, has eliminated this discovery, and who, by the 

 powers of the microscope, has revealed to us the skeletons of millions 



* Count Breunner, Director of the Imperial Mines, Foreign Member of the Geo- 

 logical Society. 

 t Professor Johnston. 



