22 EEPORT— 1880. 



it is true, these hypothetical events took place so long before authentic 

 geological history began, as written in the rocks, that the earliest of the 

 physical events to which I have drawn your attention in this address 

 was, to all human apprehension of time, so enormously removed from these 

 early assumed cosmical phenomena, that they appear to tne to have been 

 of comparatively quite modern occurrence, and to indicate that from the 

 Laurentian epoch down to the present day, all the physical events in the 

 history of the earth have vaned neither in kind nor in intensity from those of 

 which we now have experience. Perhaps many of our British geologists 

 hold similar opinions, but, if it be so, it may not be altogether useless 

 to have considered the various subjects separately on which I depend 

 to prove the point I had in view. 



