56 



PROGRESS OF SCIENCE 



surgery, pointed on investigation to another and 

 distinct form of radiation, the knowledge of which 

 proved a preliminary to the discovery of radium and 

 other radio-active substances, and to the theory of 

 radio-activity with which are associated the names 

 of Sir Ernest Rutherford and Professor F. Soddy. To 

 the study of this subject the Association has applied 

 the gift which, as recorded elsewhere (p. 151), was 

 made to it for the purpose by Sir James Caird in 1913. 



GEOLOGY AND BIOLOGY : THE CONFLICT OF SCIENCE 



AND RELIGION 



When the Association was founded James Hutton 

 was thirty-four years dead, and his pupil, John 

 Playfair, had in 1802 published his work on the 

 ' Huttonian theory ' which formed the basis for all 

 subsequent work upon the shaping and evolution 

 of the face of the earth as we now see it, and led 

 investigators to look back through the aeons of 

 geological time. Lyell first issued his standard work 

 on The Principles of Geology two years after the first 

 meeting of the Association. The new conception 

 of the slow process of earth-building (apart from 

 its purely scientific discussion, to which we must 

 refer later) conflicted with the views of those who 

 would literally interpret the scriptural description of 

 the Creation, and would assign to the process a 

 period of ' days/ 



From this and the subsequent enunciation of the 

 evolutionary theory as applied to life on the earth, 

 it results that of the meetings of the Association or 

 its sections which may conveniently be labelled as 

 ' famous occasions/ several are connected with the 



