GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCES 
IN FAVOR OF 
REVEALED RELIGION. 
TuE following treatise was read by Mr. Mitier, on taking 
the chair, for the first time, as President of the Society, on 7th 
January, 1852:— : 
GENTLEMEN, — You have done me the honor of electing me, 
by a unanimous vote, to be one of the Presidents of the Royal 
Physical Society. I little thought, some two-and-thirty years 
ago, when, rather in obedience to a native instinct than with 
any ulterior object, I sought to acquaint myself with geological 
phenomena, that there awaited me any such honor. For, una- 
ware at the time that there even existed such a science as Ge- 
ology, or that the field which it opens has its many laborers, 
some of whom meet with less, and some with more success in 
their labors, I could not so much as imagine that distinction 
was to be achieved by studying the forms and structures of the 
strange organisms which I laid open amid rocks and in quar- 
ries, or in inquiring into the circumstances in which they had 
lived and died, or into the causes to which, in ages long gone 
by, they had owed their entombment in the stone. But it seems 
to be one of the characteristics of a true science, that it should 
promise little and perform much; and that for those who 
devote themselves to it simply for its own sake, it should 
