536 Geological Society: Anniversary Address, 1843. 
from the Caucasian chain which bounds the Russian Empire on 
the south. The second illustration of metamorphism will be de- 
rived from recent researches in the Western Alps. 
Caucasian Chain.—We must now estimate the efforts of an ob- 
server, who, in common with Agassiz, does such honour to the little 
canton of Neufchatel. Though the name of M. Dubois de Mont- 
pereux has escaped the notice of my predecessors, an outline of 
his chief labours was laid before the geologists of France, in 1837, 
by M. Elie de Beaumont. Attention having been latterly much 
directed towards Russia and the adjacent regions, it becomes my 
pleasing duty, the additional researches of M. Dubois having been 
recently published, and having myself largely profited by them, in 
the construction of a map of that empire, to invite your consider- 
ation to his great work. 
From its diversified and varied outline, and its early historical 
records, no region within the reach of Europeans seemed to have a 
greater claim upon the combined efforts of geologists and historians 
than the Caucasus, and yet of no country were we more ignorant. 
For although travellers have, from time to time, passed over it by 
one great road or another, from the thirteenth to the present cen- 
tury, and though Kupffer has well described the environs of one of 
its northern peaks Elbruz,and Eichwald has explored the coasts of 
the Caspian, we had never had a true picture of the physical geo- 
graphy and varied inhabitants, still less of the geological structure 
of this chain. No one, in short, struggling with the dangers of 
climate and uncivilized inhabitants, had so threaded these mountains 
and defiles as to make us familiar with them*. This Herculean 
task was undertaken by M. Dubois, and most successfully has he 
executed it, for his work of five volumes is that of a geographer, 
historian and geologist. The lovers of Homer, Strabo and Pliny 
will assuredly find in it a mine of classical recollections, a correct 
identification of ancient sites and vivid sketches of ancient customs, 
described by Grecian and Roman writers, some of which habits pre- 
vail even to this day. Regretting, as we must, that tracts formerly 
illustrious in song, and many of them still blessed with the richest 
gifts of nature, should, for the most part, be now tenanted by wild 
and barbarous tribes, let us the more admire the zeal and energy with 
which our author, surrounded by privations, has produced so clear 
a picture of this extraordinary region. Not only does M. Dubois 
place before us the physical features and the social condition of the 
various tribes, from the Circassians on the north to the Georgians 
and Armenians on the south, but he gives us geological sections, 
maps and descriptions, and thus brings the rocks of these wild and 
rugged tracts into a clear comparison with known European types. 
* Of the scenery, antiquities and costumes of such parts of the Caucasus 
as he visited, including special illustrations of Ararat and the north of 
Persia, my lamented friend Sir Robert Ker Porter brought away a rich 
series of beautiful sketches, a few only of which have been published. Though 
not a geologist, his faithful pencil conveys an admirable idea of the character 
of the highly inclined and metamorphic strata. 
‘ 
