594 Geological Society. Anniversari/ Address, 184:2. 



transport of boulders, the striation and polish of rocks, and the ac- 

 cumulation of superficial detritus, we cannot quit the gkcial subject 

 without avowing our obligations to Venetz, Charpentier, and Agassiz, 

 and above all to the last, for having brought the agency of ice more 

 directly into consideration as a vera causa, to explain many phaeno- 

 mena on the surface. Even we who differ from Agassiz in his ge- 

 neralizations, and have not examined the Alps since the theory was 

 propounded, should not hastily adopt opinions which may be modi- 

 fied after a study of the glaciers in situ. " Come and see" is the bold 

 challenge of the Professor of Neuchatel to all who oppose him, and 

 sanguine as to the correctness of his opinions, he is certain that many 

 will be converted if they would but observe the phaenomena on which 

 his views are based. Truly we must acknowledge, that he was the first 

 person who roused our attention to the eflects produced by the bottom 

 of an advancing glacier, and if geologists should eventually be led 

 to believe, that certain parallel scratches and striae on the rocks were 

 in some instances due to glaciers moving overland, but in many 

 other cases were produced by icebergs, we must remember that the 

 fertile mind of Agassiz has aiforded us the chief means of experi- 

 mentally solving the problem. 



In conclusion. Gentlemen, it is gratifying to reflect, that not- 

 withstanding the vibrations of opinion which have been caused by 

 the introduction of glacial action among geological dynamics, the 

 fundamental principles of our science remain entirely unaffected. 

 Conspicuous as it may appear through the attractive descriptions of 

 Agassiz, or the eloquence of Buckland, the glacial theory must be 

 considered an episode only in the records we are labouring to pre- 

 pare of the grand changes of the planet. Let not, therefore, geology 

 be decried as a science without fixed principles, because her culti- 

 vators have recently differed upon a point which, though connected in 

 theory with the science, has no bearing whatever on its uses nor upon 

 the many fundamental points which it had previously established. 



Your labours, Gentlemen, and those of your foreign associates, 

 have already afforded proofs of the regular succession of the strata, 

 and have traced their chronology ; you have accurately marked the 

 revolutions which have interrupted the sequence of by-gone races ; 

 you have explained the origin and position of various mineral sub- 

 stances essential to mankind, the dependence of geographical and 

 agricultural products upon geological laws, and have shown how 

 antagonist forces proceeding from the interior have modified the 

 earth's outline, and been the cause of mineral wealth, — in a word, 

 by your patient study of the masses you have acquired a true know- 

 ledge of the structure of the surface of the globe. 



By these achievements the geologist has earned bis best trophies, 

 and has shown that the principles of his science are based upon the 

 unerring laws of nature. Let then the shortness of his bright ca- 

 reer incite us to renewed exertions, so that if at the close of life our 

 vast subject should still present some unexplained phaenomena, we 

 may at all events have won the race in our own generation by esta- 

 blisiiing new landmarks in the rapidly increasing delta of natural 

 knowledge. 



