ADDRESS. 7 



good of all ages who have entered into that unseen universe where all 

 that is high and holy and beautiful must go on accumulating till the time 

 of the restitution of all things. Let us follow their example and carry 

 on their work, as God may give us power and opportunity, gathering in 

 precious stores of knowledge and of thought, in the belief that all truth 

 is immortal, and must go on for ever bestowing blessings on mankind. 

 Thus will the memory of the mighty dead remain to us as a power 

 which — 



Like a star 

 Beacons from the abode where the eternal are. 



I do not wish, however, to occupy your time longer with general or 

 personal matters, but rather to take the opportunity afforded by this 

 address to invite your attention to some topics of scientific interest. In 

 attempting to do this I must have before me the warning conveyed by Pro- 

 fessor Huxley, in the address to which I have already referred, that in our 

 time science, like Tarpeia, may be crushed with the weight of the rewards 

 bestowed on her. In other words, it is impossible for any man to keep 

 pace with the progress of more than one limited branch of science, and 

 it is eqaally impossible to find an audience of scientific men of whom 

 anything more than a mere fraction can be expected to take an interest 

 in any one subject. There is, however, some consolation in the know- 

 ledge that a speaker who is sufficiently simple for those who are advanced 

 specialists in other departments, will of necessity be also sufficiently simple 

 to be understood by the general public who are specialists in nothing. 

 On this principle a geologist of the old school, accustomed to a great variety 

 of work, may hope so to scatter his fire as to reach the greater part of the 

 audience. In endeavouring to secure this end, I have sought inspiration 

 from that ocean which connects rather than separates Britain and America, 

 and may almost be said to be an English sea — the North Atlantic. The 

 geological history of this depression of the earth's crust, and its relation 

 to the continental masses which limit it, may furnish a theme at once 

 generally intelligible and connected with great questions as to the struc- 

 ture and history of the earth, which have excited the attention alike of 

 physicists, geologists, biologists, geographers, and ethnologists. Should 

 I, in treating of these questions, appear to be somewhat abrupt and 

 dogmatic, and to indicate rather than state the evidence of the general 

 views announced, I trust you will kindly attribute this to the exigencies 

 of a short address. 



If we imagine an observer contemplating the earth from a convenient 

 distance in space, and scrutinising its features as it rolls before him, we 

 may suppose him to be struck with the fact that eleven-sixteenths of its 

 surface are covered with water, and that the land is so unequally dis- 

 tributed that from one point of view he would see a hemisphere almost 

 exclusively oceanic, while nearly the whole of the dry land is gathered in 

 the opposite hemisphere. He might observe that the great oceanic area 



