CHAPTER IV. 

 THE HISTORY OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC, 



I HAD the pleasure of being present at the meeting of the 

 British Association at Birmingham, in 1865 : a meeting 

 attended by an unusually large number of eminent geologists, 

 under the presidency of my friend Phillips. I had the further 

 pleasure of being his successor at the meeting in the same 

 place, in 1886; and the subject of this chapter is that to 

 which I directed the attention of the Association in my 

 Presidential address. I fear it is a feeble and imperfect utter- 

 ance compared with that which might have been given forth by 

 any of the great men present in 1865, and who have since left 

 us, could they have spoken with the added knowledge of the 

 intervening twenty years. 



The geological history of the Atlantic appeared to be a 

 suitable subject for a trans-Atlantic president, and to a Society 

 which had vindicated its claim to be British in the widest 

 sense by holding a meeting in Canada, while it was also 

 meditating a visit to Australia — a visit not yet accomplished, 

 but in which it may now meet with a worthy daughter in the 

 Australian Association formed since the meeting of 1886. The 

 subject is also one carrying our thoughts very far back in 

 geological time, and connecting itself with some of the latest 

 and most important discussions and discoveries in the science 

 of the earth, furnishing, indeed, too many salient points to be 

 profitably occupied in a single chapter. 



If we imagine an observer contemplating the earth from a 



