Preddenfs Address. 305 



of the Committee. Meanwhile, we consider it a 

 privilege to be the recorder of a considerable ]3ortion 

 of the results — brought up to the date of the present 

 time — of the able and careful work of Mr Agnew. 

 The Eighth Eeport of our Committee will contain the 

 last year of Mr Agnew's observations at the Isle of 

 May. 



Taking, then, these several lieadings in their consecutive 

 order, I will first speak of the island of Heligoland and the 

 continent of Europe in their relationship to Great Britain 

 and the Isle of May and to migrational phenomena. 



1. Heligoland is a steep, bold, red sandstone rock, with level 

 surface and precipitous sides, and is clothed over the larger 

 portion of its summit by stretches of potato-lands belonging 

 to the inhabitants. It rises from a great expanse of shallow 

 sea and sandbank opposite the mouth of the Eiver Elbe, and 

 is some 46 miles N.W. of the mouths of the Elbe and the 

 Weset Rivers. It is in Lat. 54° 11' K, and Long. 8° 14' E. 

 (Compare, for purposes to be explained further on, its posi- 

 tions in latitude and longitude with those of the Isle of May.) 



Undoubtedly, at a remote period — yet a comparatively 

 recent one in geological time— Heligoland was united with 

 the adjacent continent of Europe, and also with the further- 

 off Isles of Great Britain, and with the now submerged 

 Dogger Fishing Banks in the German Sea, which are at the 

 present time about 9 to 15 fathoms beneath the surface of 

 the ocean. The Hundred-Eathom line encircling Great 

 Britain, or rather forming it into a great IST.W. peninsula of 

 ancient Europe, clearly shows this. This great N.W. penin- 

 sula, which included Great Britain and Ireland, and the 

 lesser isles of Shetland, Orkney, and the Hebrides, extended, 

 at its apex, to a position in degrees of latitude opposite to 

 the coast of Norway^ in about Lat. 61° K^ or the latitude of 

 Bergen, and was joined to the continent at the northern 

 extremity of Jutland; and reached down and outside the 

 British Isles to a considerable distance S. W. of the Land's-End 

 in Cornwall, and approached again the French coast at Cape 

 Finisterre, and finally continued along the W. coast of France 



