176 HUTTONIAN THEORY 



science. It was enough for them to maintain, as 

 Hutton had done, that in the visible structure of the 

 earth itself no trace can be found of the beginning 

 of things, and that the oldest terrestrial records reveal 

 no physical conditions essentially different from those 

 in which we still live. They doubtless listened with 

 interest to the speculations of Kant, Laplace, and 

 Herschel, on the probable evolution of nebulae, suns, 

 and planets, but it was with the languid interest attach- 

 ing to ideas that lay outside of their own domain of 

 research. They recognised no practical connection 

 between such speculations and the data furnished by 

 the earth itself as to its own history and progress. 



This curious lethargy with respect to theory, on the 

 part of men who were popularly regarded as among 

 the most speculative followers of science, would pro- 

 bably not have been speedily dispelled by any discovery 

 made within their own field of observation. Even 

 now, after many years of the most diligent research, 

 the first chapters of our planet's history remain un- 

 discovered or undecipherable. On the great terrestrial 

 palimpsest the earliest inscriptions seem to have been 

 hopelessly effaced by those of later ages. But the 

 question of the primeval condition and subsequent his- 

 tory of the planet might be considered from the side of 

 astronomy and physics. And it was by investigations 

 of this nature that the geological torpor was eventually 

 dissipated. To our illustrious former President, Lord 

 Kelvin, who occupied this chair when the Association 

 last met in Edinburgh, is mainly due the rousing of 

 attention to this subject. By the most convincing 

 arguments he showed how impossible it was to believe 



