Notes and Comments. 355 



AND ITS DANGERS. 



The great harm likely to arise in connection with a con- 

 tribution of this sort, lies in the fact that the Presidential 

 Address delivered at a British Association meeting is published 

 far and wide ; probably more than is any other address to any 

 other body. Every newspaper of importance, and many scien- 

 tific journals, publish it in extenso ; and few are even the half- 

 penny evening papers that do not contain a lengthy summary 

 of it. To most people, the opinion of the President of the 

 British Association, on any given subject, is final. There are 

 thousands who have not the time nor the opportunity of 

 looking at a subject from all points of view ; who will, naturally, 

 be prepared to accept the verdict of the leading scientist of the 

 world for the time being. Principally we have in mind the 

 average teacher, whose views are quickly transferred to scores 

 of scholars. In this way we consider that, even were the theme 

 worthy of being taken as the Presidential Address, its delivering 

 and publication has not been in the best interests of ' the 

 advancement of science.' Geologists abroad, who are ' land- 

 icers ' to a man, will have a strange impression of the present 

 state of English geology. 



FACTS AND FANCIES. 



We wish our space permitted us to deal in detail with Pro- 

 fessor Bonney's remarks, but we may perhaps refer to one or 

 two points. On pages 23-24 of the official copy of the address, 

 we find it stated that ' The [British] ice must have been curiously 

 inconstant in its operations. It is supposed in one place to 

 have glided gently over its bed, in another to have gripped and 

 torn out large masses of rock. Both actions may be possible 

 in a mountain region, but it is very difficult to understand how 

 they could occur in a lowland or plain.' On pages 11-12, when 

 speaking of the time when the Rhone glacier covered the 

 lowlands of Vaud and Geneva, Professor Bonney says : ' it 

 ought to have given signs of its erosive no less than of its trans- 

 porting power. But what are the facts ? In these lowlands 

 we can see where the ice has passed over the Molasse (a Miocene 

 sandstone) ; but here instead of having crushed, torn, and 

 uprooted the comparatively soft rock, it has produced hardly 

 any effect. The huge glacier from the Linth Valley crept for 

 not a few miles over a floor of stratified gravels, on which, 

 some eight miles below Zurich, one of its moraines, formed 



igio Oct. I. 



