Mr. Poulett Scrope’s Address. 19 
It is possible, however, that some who hear me may have been 
startled by the number and variety of the strange sea-monsters, 
whom I have already alluded to as the former inhabitants of our now 
orderly inland county. If so, let them take heart, and with the aid 
which this Society will, I trust, soon afford, apply themselves to the 
study of geology. They will then speedily become familiar with yet 
greater marvels. They will learn that all our seemingly solid and 
immovable continents have been—and still are—continually under- 
going changes of place and structure, amounting in the lapse of 
ages to absolute revolution—at one time raised above, at another 
depressed beneath the level of the ocean, ground down by the 
action of water, baked by subterranean heat, and broken up by 
earthquakes and volcanoes—aboye all, that the rocks and strata 
which compose them are almost wholly made up of the remains of 
countless myriads of organized beings, once enjoying light and life, 
like ourselves,—that, in the words of Bryon, 
‘The dust we tread upon was once alive!” 
_ And the deeper insight they may obtain, by these or other con- 
genial inquiries, into the exhaustless wonders of Creation, the more 
impressed they will become with reverential awe and gratitude 
towards the Almighty Creator— 
‘““Who sits above the Heavens, 
To us invisible, yet dimly seen 
In these His glorious works!” 
For this, after all, is the most gratifying result of such inquiries. 
They lead the mind “from Nature up to Nature’s God’”’—and in- 
spire a devotional feeling in those who pursue them, which favour- 
ably influences their religious and moral character. (Cheers.) 
I possess too little acquaintance with the kindred sciences of 
Botany and Zoology to be able to give an opinion worth anything 
on the degree to which the county may afford employment to the 
student of living genera and species. But it cannot be otherwise 
than desirable that local observers of these fields, likewise, of 
scientific research, should be put in communication with each other, 
and a Museum formed in which our existing Fauna and Flora, no 
less than those of our Ancient History, may be studied and 
appreciated. 
As some encouragement to provincial students of Natural History, 
I may remind them that the greatest philosopher of the day, Sir 
_ John Herschel, in his admirable “Discourse on the Study of Natural 
Philosophy,” speaks of the advantages possessed by local residents 
for acquiring and communicating correct information, as infinitely 
superior to those of observers of a more general character. ‘Those 
alone,” he says, “who reside upon the spot, where the phenomena 
occur, can make such a continued series of regular observations as 
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