ORDINARY MEETING.* 

 The President, Sir G. G. Stokes, Bart., in the Chair. 



The President. — The author of this paper beinor resident in the United 

 States, it will be read in his absence. Professor E. Hull, LL.D., F.E.S., 

 has kindly undertaken to do so. 



The following paper was then read : — 



CAUSES OF THE ICE AGE. By Warren Uphav, 

 of the New Hampshire, Minnesota, and United States 

 Geological Surveys. 



IT is universally recognized that the century now noarij-g 

 its end has been one of most rapid intellectual and 

 material progress. Not less grand and beneficent than the 

 inventions of the steaniship and locomotive, of pliotography, 

 the telegraph and the telephone, have been the investigations 

 through the natural sciences revealing the chemical constitu- 

 tion and relationships of matter, the long and varied history 

 of plant and animal life on our globe, and the gradual pro- 

 cesses by which God has worked to create, and to bring into 

 their present condition, the stars, the sun, and the earth. 

 Though it was not His purpose in the Bible to reveal and 

 teach science, there is given as the portal of approach to 

 that Book a very brief chronicle of the creation of this place 

 of man's abode, wliich, if regarded according to Hugh 

 Miller's suggestion, is so completely in accord with the 

 history made known by the rocks to the geologist that Dana, 

 the most eminent of Americans in this science, declares the 

 record of Genesis "profoundly philosophical . . . . 



* 14th of 2nth Session. The consideration of the subject was concluded 

 and the author's reply received September, 1897. 



