712 REPORT— 1900. 



advances made by its sister sciences, althoiio'li he bad knowledge of tbem, and 

 thus sinned a>rainst tbe ligbt. In tbe last edition of the famous • Principles ' we 

 read : ' It is a favourite dogma of some pbysicists that not only the earth, but the 

 sun itself, is continually losing a portion of its heat, and tliat as there is no known 

 source by which it can be restored we can foresee the time when all life will cease 

 to exist on this planet, and on the other hand we can look back to a period when 

 tbe heat was so intense as to be incompatible with the existence of any organic 

 beings such as are icnown to us in the living or fossil world. ... A geologist in 

 search of some renovating power by which the amount of heat may be made to 

 continue unimpaired for millions of years, past and future, in the solid parts of the 

 earth . . . has been compared by an eminent physicist to one who dreams he 

 can discover a source of perpetual motion and invent a clock with a self-winding 

 apparatus. But zvhij should we despair of detecting proofs of such regenerating 

 and self-sustaining power in the %vorks of a Divine Artificer ? ' Here we catch the 

 true spirit of unifoimity ; it admittedly regards the universe as a self-winding 

 clock, and barely conceals a conviction that the clock was warranted to keep 

 true Greenwich time. The law of the dissipation of energy is not a dogma, but a 

 doctrine drawn from observation, while the uniformity of Lyell is in no sense an 

 induction : it is a dogma in the narrowest sense of the word, unproved, incapable 

 of proof ; hence perhaps its power upon the human mind ; hence also the transi- 

 toriness of that power. Again, it is only by restricting its inquiries to the stratified 

 rocks of our planet that the dogma of uniformity can be maintained with any pretence 

 of argument. Directly we begin to search the heavens the possibility, nay even 

 the likelihood, of the nebular origin of our system, with all that it involves, is 

 borne in upon us. Lypll therefore consistently refused to extend his gaze beyond 

 the rocks beneath his feet, and was thus led to do a serious injury to our science: 

 he severed it from cosmogony, for which he entertained and expressed the most 

 profound contempt, and from the mutilation thus inflicted geology is only at length 

 making a slow and painful recovery. Why do I dwell on these facts? To 

 depreciate Lyell? By no means. No one is more conscious than I of the noble 

 service whicb Lyell rendered to our cause : his reputation is of too robust a kind 

 to sutler from my unskilful handling, and the iame of bis solid contributions to 

 science will endure long after these controversies are forgotten. The echoes of 

 the combat are already dying away, and uniformitarians, in the sense already 

 defined, are now no more ; indeed, were I to attempt to exhibit any distinguished 

 living geologist as a still surviving supporter of the narrow Lyellian creed, he 

 would probably feel, if such a one there be, that I was unfairly singling him out 

 for unmerited obloqu}'. 



Our science has become evolutional, and in the transformation has grown 

 more comprehensive : her petty parochial days are done, she is drawing her pro- 

 vinces closer around her, and is fusing them together into a united and single com- 

 monwealfh — the science of the earth. 



Not merely the earth's crust, but the whole of earth-knowledge is the sub- 

 ject of our research. To know all that can be known about our planet, this, and 

 nothing less than this, is its aim and scope. From tbe morphological side geology 

 inquires not only into tbe existing form and structure of the earth, but also into the 

 series of successive morphological states through which it has passed in a long 

 and changeful development. Our science inquires also into the distribution of 

 the earth in time and space ; on the physiological side it studies the movements 

 and activities of our planet ; and not content with all this it extends its researches 

 into aetiology and endeavours to arrive at a science of causation. Li these pursuits 

 geology calls all the other sciences to her aid. In our commonwealth there are no 

 outlanders ; if an eminent physicist enter our territory we do not begin at once 

 to prepare for war, because the very fact of his undertaking a geological inquiry of 

 itself confers upon him all the duties and privileges of citizenship. A physicist 

 studying geology is by definition a irenlogist. Our only regret is, not that physi- 

 cists occasionally invade our borders, but that they do not visit us ofteuer and 

 ipake closer acquaintance with us. 



