372 



NATURE 



[August i8, 1892 



showing the movement in the line of sight of the F line caused 

 by the presence of a protuberance in the region of the spot. 

 "The Length of our Earth-days," "A Lost Comet," and 

 " Paris Scientific Undertakings " are titles of other communi- 

 cations, the last of which is a brief general survey of recent 

 additions to our knowledge about the construction and move- 

 ment of the visible universe. 



Astronomy at the Columbian Exposition.— Arrange- 

 ments are about to be made for organizing a series of congresses 

 or conventions to be held next year during the progress of the 

 World's Exposition. The preliminary address of the General 

 Committee on Mathematics and Astronomy points out that such 

 a congress should take advantage of the presence of the leading 

 scholars of the world for the mutual interchange of ideas by 

 presenting and considering investigations in special lines of 

 research. 



The sections dealing with Astronomy and Astro-Physics are 

 eight in number and are as follows : — 



Astronomy. 



a. History of Astronomy. 



b. Astronomical Instruments. 



c. Methods of Observation. 



d. Physical Astronomy. 



e. Observatory Buildings, 



Astro-Physics. 



a. Spectrum Analysis. 



b. Astronomical Photography. 



c. Stellar Photometry. 



The address further states that advice and suggestions with 

 regard to the general conduct of the convention are earnestly 

 invited, while special stress is laid on the scientific questions 

 for future discussion. The Chairmen of the Special Com- 

 mittees of the several subjects under the charge of the General 

 Committee are as follows : — 



Pure Mathematics. — Prof. E. H. Moore, Chicago University. 



Astronomy. — Prof. G. W. Hough, Dearborn Observatory, 

 North-western University, Evanston. 



Astro- Physics. — Prof. George E. Hale, Kenwood Astro- 

 Physical Observatory, Chicago. 



Among the names in the partial lists of the Advisory Councils 

 on these two subjects we notice those of Prof. A. Cayley and 

 Prof. J. J. Sylvester for mathematics, and S. Copeland (Astro- 

 nomer Royal for Scotland), Prof. R. S. Ball, Prof. Gill, Mr. 

 Norman Lockyer, the Earl of Rosse, Prof. Liveing, Prof. 

 Dewar, and Dr. Huggins. 



Lunar Eclipse, May ii, 1892. — With reference to the 

 lunar eclipse that occurred last May, Astrononiische Nachrich- 

 ten No. 3106 contains a series of accounts, which include the 

 times of immersion and emersion of the objects on the moon's 

 surface, gathered from the following observatories : — Bonn, 

 Heidelberg, Breslau, Christiania, Prag, Kiel, and Kalocsa. 



Numeration of Asteroids.— The Astronomical Journal 

 No. 271 contains the announcement that an arrangement had 

 been agreed upon by which the numeration of asteroids will in 

 future be put on a sound basis. For the present Prof. Krueger 

 will assign to these bodies the notation 1892 A, B, C... in the 

 order in which their announcement is sent to the Telegraphische 

 Central-Stelle, Prof. Tietzen, Director of the Rechen Institute 

 in Berlin, in the meantime undertaking their definite numeration. 

 This arrangement will be found to avoid all such confusion as 

 has been experienced with regard to those asteroids about which 

 sufficient information is not available for their orbital deter- 

 minations. Although they will not now receive their numbers, 

 they can easily be recognized by their lettering in the annual 



THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 



SECTION C. 



Geology. 



Opening Address by Prof. C. Lapworth, LL.D., F.R.S., 



F.G.S ., President of the Section, 

 It has, I believe, been the rule for the man who has been 

 honoured by election to the chair of President of the Geological 

 Section of the British Association to address its members upon 



NO, I 190, VOL. 46] 



the recent advances made in that branch of geology in which he 

 has himself been most immediately interested. It is not my in- 

 tention upon the present occasion to depart from this time- 

 honoured custom ; for it has both the merit of simplicity and 

 the advantage of utility to recommend it. In this way each 

 branch of our science, as it becomes in turn represented, not 

 only submits to the workers in other departments a report of its 

 own progress, but presents by implication a broad sketch of the 

 entire geological landscape, seen through the coloured glasses, 

 it may be, of divisional prejudice, but at any rate instructive 

 and corrective to the workers in other departments, as being 

 taken from what is to them a novel and an unfamiliar point of 

 view. 



Now every tyro in geology is well aware of the fact that the 

 very backbone of geological science is constituted by what is 

 known as stratigraphical geology, or the study of the geological 

 formations. These formations, stratified and unstratified, build 

 up all that part of the visible earth-crust which is accessible to 

 the investigator. Their outcropping edges constitute the visible 

 exterior of our globe, the surface of which forms the physical 

 geography of the present day, and their internal characters and 

 inter-relationships afford us our only clues to the physical 

 geographies of bygone ages. Within them lies enshrined all 

 that we may ever hope to discover of the history and the de- 

 velopment of the habitable world of the past. 



These formations are to the stratigraphical geologist what 

 species are to the biologist, or what the heavenly bodies are tO' 

 the astrnnomer. It was the discovery of these loriiiaUDns whicti 

 first elevattd geology to the rank of a science. In the working 

 out of their characters, their relationships, their development, 

 and their origin, geology finds its means, its aims, and its justifi- 

 cation. Whatever fresh material our science may yield to man's 

 full conception of nature, organic and inorganic, must of 

 necessity be grouped around these special and peculiar objects 

 of its contemplation. 



When the great Werner first taught that our earth-crust was 

 made up of superimposed rock-sheets or formations arranged in 

 determinable order, the value of his conclusions from an 

 economic point of view soon led to their enthusiastic and careful 

 study ; and his crude theory of their successive precipitation 

 from a universal chaotic ocean disarmed the suspicions of the 

 many until the facts themselves had gained such a wide accept- 

 ance that denial was no longer possible. But when the 

 greater Hutton asserted that each of these rock formations 

 was in reality nothing more nor less than the recemented 

 ruins of an earlier world, the prejudices of mankind at large 

 were loosed at a single stroke. Like Galileo's assertion of 

 the movement of the globe, this demanded such an apparently 

 undignified and improbable mode of creation that there is no 

 wonder that, even down to the present day, there still exist 

 some to whom this is a hard saying, to be taken, if taken at all, 

 in homceopathic doses and with undisguised reluctance. 



Hutton, as regards his philosophy, was, as we know, far in 

 advance of his time. With all the boldness of conviction he 

 unflinchingly followed out these ideas to their legitimate results. 

 He claimed that as the stratified formations were composed of 

 similar materials —sands, clays, limestones, and muds — to those 

 now being laid down in the seas around our present coasts, they 

 must, like them, have been the products of ordinary natural 

 agencies — of rain, rivers, and sea waters, internal heat and external 

 cold — acting precisely as they act now. And further as these 

 formations lie one below the other, in apparently endless down- 

 ward succession, and all are formed more or less of these frag- 

 mentary materials, so the present order of natural phenomena 

 must have existed for untold ages. Indeed, to the commence- 

 ment of this order he frankly admits, "I see no trace of a be- 

 ginning or sign of an end." 



The history of the slow acceptance of Hutton's doctrines, 

 even among geologists, is, of course, perfectly familiar to us all. 

 William Smith reduced the disputed formations to order, aud 

 showed that not only was each composed of the ruins of a 

 vanished land, but that each contained in its fossils the proof 

 that it was deposited in a vanished sea inhabited by special life 

 creation. Cuvier followed, and placed it beyond question that 

 the fossilized relics of these departed beings were such as made 

 it absolutely unquestionable that these creatures might well have 

 inhabited the earth at the present day. Lyell completed the 

 cycle by demonstrating stage by stage the efficiency of present 

 natural agencies to do all the work required for the degi'adation 

 and rebuilding of the formations. Since his day the students of 



