18 president's address. 



supposed, and the latter showed that in all probability the planets had 

 all turned upside down since their birth. 



And yet M. Brunettiere and his friends wish us to believe that 

 science is bankrupt and has no new things in store for humanity. 



Geology. — In the field of geological research the main feature in 

 the past twenty-five years has been the increasing acceptance of the 

 evolutionary as contrasted with the uniformitarian view of geological 

 phenomena. The great work of Suess, ' Das Antlitz der Erde,' is un- 

 doubtedly the most important contribution to physical geology within the 

 period. The first volume appeared in 1885, and the impetus which it has 

 given to the science may be judged of by the epithet applied to the views 

 for which Suess is responsible — ' the New Geology.' Suess attempts to 

 trace the orderly sequence of the principal changes in the earth's crust 

 since it first began to form. He strongly opposes the old theory 

 of elevation, and accounts for the movements as due to diffei'ential 

 collapse of the crust, accompanied by folding due to tangential stress. 

 Among special results gained, by geologists in the period we survey may 

 be cited new views as to the origin of the crystalline schists, favouring 

 a return to something like the hypogene origin advocated by Lyell ; the 

 facta as to deep-sea deposits, now in course of formation, embodied in the 

 ' Challenger ' reports on that subject : the increasing discrimination and 

 tracking of those minor divisions of strata called ' zones ' ; the assignment 

 of the Olenellus fauna of Cambrian age to a position earlier than that of 

 the Paradoxides fauna ; the discovery of Radiolaria in palseozoic rocks by 

 special methods of examination, and the recognition of Graptolites as 

 indices of geological horizons in lower paleozoic beds. Glacially eroded 

 rocks in boulder-clays of permo-carboniferous age have been recognised 

 in many parts of the world {e.g., Australia and South Africa), and 

 thus the view put forward by W. T. JBlanford as to the occurrence 

 of the same phenomena in conglomerates of this age in India is con- 

 firmed. Eozoon is finally abandoned as owing its structure to an organism, 

 The oldest fossiliferous beds known to us are still far from the beginning 

 of life. They contain a highly developed and varied animal fauna — and 

 something like the whole of the older moiety of rocks of aqueous origin 

 have failed as yet to present us with any remains of the animals or plants 

 which must have inhabited the seas which deposited them. The boring of 

 a coral reef initiated by Professor SoUas at the Nottingham meeting 

 of this Association in 1893 was successfully carried out, and a depth of 

 1,1145^ feet reached. Information of great value to geologists was thus 

 obtained. 



Animal and Vegetable Morphography. — Were I to attempt to give an 

 account of the new kinds of animals and plants discovered since 1881, 

 I should have to read out a bare catalogue, for time would not allow me 

 to explain the interest attaching to each. Explorers have been busy 

 in all parts of the world — in Central Africa, in the Antarctic, in remote 

 parts of China, in Patagonia and Australia, and on the floor of the ocean, 



