232 GEOLOGICAL TIME 



has already been done by the adoption of these practical 

 methods, from the time of Hall, the founder of experi- 

 mental geology, down to our own day, we cannot but 

 feel that our very appreciation of the gain which the 

 science has thus derived increases the desire to see 

 the practice still further multiplied and extended. I 

 am confident that it is in this direction more than 

 in any other that the next great advances of geology 

 are to be anticipated. 



While much may be done by individual students, 

 it is less to their single efforts than to the combined 

 investigations of many fellow-workers that I look most 

 hopefully for the accumulation of data towards the 

 determination of the present rate of geological changes. 

 I would, therefore, commend this subject to the geo- 

 logists of this and other countries as one in which 

 individual, national, and international co-operation 

 might well be enlisted. We already possess an insti- 

 tution which seems well adapted to undertake and 

 control an enterprise of the kind suggested. The 

 International Geological Congress, which brings to- 

 gether our associates from all parts of the globe, would 

 confer a lasting benefit on the science if it could 

 organise a system of combined observation in any 

 single one of the departments of inquiry which I have 

 indicated or in any other which might be selected. 

 We need not at first be too ambitious. The simplest, 

 easiest, and least costly series of observations might 

 be chosen for a beginning. The work might be dis- 

 tributed among the different countries represented in 

 the Congress. Each nation would be entirely free 

 in its selection of subjects for investigation, and would 



