TRANSACTIONS OF THD SECTIONS. 73 



in Glasgow, I hope that the services which scieuce has rendered to mining; and 

 luetallurgy may have been recognized bv those who have reaped the benefit. 

 During the efforts of years to obtain provision for systematic teaching in Mining 

 and MetaUurgy, practical and scientiiic have always been set in opposition by those 

 whom I addressed. In another twenty years it mav have become apparent that it 

 is possible for a man to be both practical and scientific, and that the combination is 

 most conducive to economy. 



Geology occupies the anomalous positiou of being a science without a special ter- 

 minology," a position largely the result of its liistory, but to some extent inherent in 

 its subject-matter. Treated of by liutton and Playfair and their opponents in the 

 ordinary language of conversation, current phrases were adopted into science, not so 

 much acquiring special meanings as adding new ambiguities to those already 

 existing. Everv one seemed to understand them at once ; and thus, as no one was 

 obliged to attach verj^ precise meanings to them, the instruments of research became 

 its impediments, and the phrases in common use at the beginning of the centm-y 

 have transmitted to the present day the erroneous ideas of those by whom they were 

 first employed. When Lj'ell, in 1832, methodized the knowledge accumulated 

 prior to that date, he had, in organizing the scieuce, to choose between inventing 

 an appropriate terminology and adopting that in common use. By doing the latter 

 lie promoted the popularity of the science, though at the cost of some subsequent 

 confusion ; by attempting the former he would have set in arms against him those 

 who would, according to the pedantry of the time, have denounced his neologisms and 

 foimd in them a decorous veil for the objections which they entertained on other 

 grounds to his views. Lj'ell was not the man to face the latter difficulty ; nor can 

 it be charged against him that he was wittingly neglectful of the interests of 

 science. But to the use of conversational language are traceable certain assump- 

 tions to which I desire to draw your attention. In venturing criticism of this kind 

 I am not unmindful of the Nemesis which has overtaken my colleague, Sir VV. 

 Thomson for his comments on Lyell's language. Thomson took exception to lan- 

 guage whicli implied a kind of perpetual motion, a circulation of energy- at variance 

 with the teaching of physics : and, behold, two or three years after, Lockyer has 

 published, as a physical astronomer, and Prestwich has approved, as a geologist, the 

 opinion that the temperature of the sun may have fluctuated, that, in fact, changes 

 of chemical combination may from time to time have refreshed the heat of the 

 planet, whose uniform rate of cooling Sir William had assumed. 

 - When sti'ati graphical geology first received due attention, the notion w.as pre- 

 valent that each formation terminated suddenly by cataclysm ; it was therefore 

 natural tliat the British succession, the earliest to be tabulated in detail, should be 

 taken as a standard for other countries, and that the emmieration of the series 

 should be a generalized section in which were incorporated those strata not pre- 

 sent in Britain. The " intercalation " of beds thus practised to make an " incom- 

 plete " series "complete," still survives, as do the terms, though the notions which 

 underlie them are formally denied by those who use them. A patriotic fellow- 

 countrj'man once surprised us by his ■(•ehement denunciation of a treacherous Scot 

 who called the Lanarkshire Limestones meagre and incomplete as compared with 

 the English. With knowledge he might have made his criticism useful ; as it was, 

 he only gave a fresh example of the national peculiarity which, if it cannot prove 

 Scotland to be better ofi' than its neighbom's, is content if it can make it out to be no 

 worse. The abundant fossils of the Mesozoic strata of England and Prance ren- 

 dered comparison easy, and created the impression that conchology was the ABC 

 of geology, physical being subordinated to palajontological evidence. The balance 

 has been somewhat restored by the Geological Survey, the precision of whose 

 physical observations enables them to guide the palfeontologist as often as they 

 have to be guided by him. But one legacy from our predecessors we have not got 

 rid of; nor, indeed, has its value been much called in question. 



The process of intercalation had at first to do only with observed gaps, into which 

 obvious equivalents could be received. But as the needs of speculative Biology 

 rapidly increased, in the same ratio did belief in the imperfection of the geological 

 record increase, till now we have that record described as a most fragmentary 

 volume, nay, as the remains of the last volume, whose predecessors are lost to us. 



1876. 8 



