ADDRESS 



BY 



SIR CHARLES LYELL, Bart., LL.D., D.C.L., F.R.S., &c. 



Gentlemen of the British Association, — The place where we have been 

 invited this year to hold our Thirty-fourth Meeting is one of no ordinary 

 interest to the cultivators of physical science. It might have been selected 

 by my feUow-labourers in geology as a central point of observation, from 

 which, by short excursions to the east and west, they might examine those 

 rocks wMch constitute, on the one side, the more modem, and on the other 

 the more ancient records of the past, while around them and at their feet lie 

 monuments of the middle period of the earth's history. But there are other 

 sites in England which might successfully compete with Bath as good sur- 

 veying stations for the geologist. What renders Bath a peculiar point of 

 attraction to the student of natural phenomena is its thermal and mineral 

 waters, to the sanatory powers of which the city has owed its origin and 

 celebrity. The great volume and high temperature of these waters render 

 them not only unique in our island, but perhaps without a parallel in the rest 

 of Europe, when we duly take into account their distance from the nearest 

 region of violent earthquakes or of active or extinct volcanos. The spot 

 where they issue, as we learn from the researches of the historian and anti- 

 quary, was lonely and desert when the Romans first landed in this island, 

 but in a few years it was converted into one of the chief cities of the newly 

 conquered province. On the site of the hot springs was a large morass from 

 which clouds of white vapour rose into the air ; and there first was the 

 spacious bath-room built, in a highly ornamental style of architecture, and 

 decorated with colimms, pUasters, and tessellated pavements. By its side 

 was erected a splendid temple dedicated to Minerva, of which some statues 

 and altars with their inscriptions, and ornate pillars are still to be seen in 

 the Museum of this place. To these edifices the quarters of the garrison, and 

 in the course of time the dweUings of new settlers, were added ; and they 

 were all encircled by a massive wall, the solid foundations of which still 

 remain. 



A dense mass of soil and rubbish, from 10 to 20 feet thick, now separates 

 the level on which the present city stands from the level of the ancient 

 Aquae SoHs of the Eomans. Digging through this mass of heterogeneous 

 materials, coins and coffins of the Saxon period have been found ; and lower 

 down, beginning at the depth of fi'om 12 to 15 feet from the surface, coins 

 have been disinterred of Imperial Rome, bearing dates from the reign of 

 Claudius to that of Maximus in the fifth century. Beneath the whole are 

 occasionally seen tessellated pavements stiU retaining their bright colours, 

 one of which, on the site of the Mineral-water Hospital, is still carefully pre- 

 served, affording us an opportimity of gauging the difference of level of ancient 

 and modem Bath. 



