532 REPORT—1904. 
Sscrion C.—GEOLOGY. 
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION—AUBREY StTRAHAN, M.A., F.R.S. 
THURSDAY, AUGUST 18. 
The President delivered the following Address :— 
[PLATE VIII.] 
Ir is forty-two years since the British Association last met in Cambridge, and 
we may turn with no little interest to the record of what was taking place at a 
date when the science of Geology was still in its infancy, and in a University 
where its promise of development was first recognised. Dr. John Woodward, the 
founder of the Woodwardian Chair, had been dead 176 years, but his bequest to the 
University had not long begun to bear fruit, for the determination to house suit- 
ably the collection of fossils and to provide for the reading of a systematic course 
of lectures was not arrived at till 1818. In that year Adam Sedgwick, on his 
appointment to the Woodwardian Chair, began a series of investigations into the 
geology of this country, which made one of the most memorable epoclis in the 
history of British Geology. At the Cambridge meeting of 1862 he had therefore 
held the professorship for forty-four years, a period sufficient to spread his reputa- 
tion throughout the civilised world as one of the pioneers of geological science. 
Towards the close of his life Sedgwick gave expression to the objects which 
he had had in view when he accepted a professorship in a science to which he had 
not hitherto specially devoted his attention. ‘There were three prominent hopes,’ 
he writes, ‘which possessed my heart in the earliest days of my Professorship. 
First, that I might be enabled to bring together a Collection worthy of the 
University, and illustrative of all the departments of the Science it was my duty 
to study and to teach. Secondly, that a Geological Museum might be built by the 
University, amply capable of containing its future Collections; and lastly, that 
I might bring together a Class of Students who would listen to my teaching, 
support me by their sympathy, and help me by the labour of their hands.’ 
We, visiting the scene of his labours more than thirty years after he wrote these 
words, witness the realisation of Sedgwick’s hopes. The collection is not only 
worthy of the University, but has become one of the finest in the kingdom, It is 
housed in this magnificent memorial to the name of Sedgwick, on the completion of 
which I offer for myself, and I trust I may do so on behalf of this Section also, 
hearty congratulations to the Woodwardian Professor and his staff. Finally, I 
may remind you that at this moment the Directorship of the Geological Survey 
and the Presidential Chair of the Geological Society are held by Cambridge men; 
that the sister University has not disdained to borrow from the same source; and 
lastly, that it is upon Cambridge chiefly that we have learned to depend for recruit- 
ing the ranks of the Geological Survey, as proofs that Cambridge has maintained 
her place among the foremost of the British schools of Geology. 
‘hough he had taken a leading part at former meetings of the Association, 
Sedgwick’s advanced age in 1862 necessitated rest, and this Section was deprived 
