632 REPORT— 1894. 



to safeg'uard tlie interests of future audiences, foo.' tlie example of technicality which 

 I am now about to set is one which 1 cannot recommend my successors to follow. 



As for subject, a record of recent scientific progress is always interest- 

 ing and instructive, and immediately suggests itself as the natural basis of 

 a presidential address. But seeing that, so lately as in February last, the 

 geologists have had the advantage of an address from the retiring president of 

 their Society, Mr. Hudleston, which has been virtually exhaustive in its survey 

 and criticism of the British geological work of the last seven years, the time has 

 scarcely yet arrived when a continuation of that review by the president of this 

 Section can be of service to the members of the Association. 



For this and other still more weighty reasons which I need not directly 

 mention, I feel myself debarred from undertaking any review of recent geological 

 discovery, and shall therefore ask you to allow me to confine myself, in the 

 remarks it is my duty to make, to a science which, though it is not purely 

 geological, and in the Reports of the Association has long been associated with 

 the science of another Section, Chemistry, is yet very closely related to the science 

 of our own Section, Geology. 



I trust that the members of the Section of Chemistry and Mineralogy are now 

 so closely engaged in another place that they will fail to discover, or at any rate to 

 resent, the technical trespass on their own domain : as for yourselves, you will 

 perhaps be more ready to pardon the temporary excursion from the field of pure 

 Geology if I remind you that the Fathers of the Geological Society defined their 

 sole object to be 'the investigation of the mineral structure of the Earth ; ' and I 

 may add, if further defence be desired, that in the first half of this century the 

 relationship of Mineralogy and Geology was so intimate that it was possible for a 

 Section of the British Museum to be long officially designated ' the Department of 

 Mineralogy, including Geology.' 



I was the more impelled to choose this subject for our consideration to-day 

 when I reflected that pure Mineralogy has been hitherto almost completely out of 

 sight, and therefore probably out of mind, at the Meetings of the Association. It 

 is true that at the first Meeting, held sixty-three years ago, Mr. Whewell, then the 

 Professor of Mineralogy at Cambridge, was invited to draw up a report on the state 

 of knowledge of the science, and that his report was submitted and printed in the 

 foUowiog 3'ear. But in the course of the sixty-three years during which the Asso- 

 ciation has flourished, it has chanced that a devotee of pure mineralogy has on only 

 one occasion, that of 1862, been seated in a presidential chair ; and since at that 

 time presidential addresses had not yet come to be regarded as necessary to the 

 existence of the Sections, Professor Miller, with admirable discretion, refrained from 

 inflicting a mineralogical dissertation on an audience which, he had reason to pre- 

 sume, must consist entirely, or almost entirely, of chemists. 



Perhaps you might be tempted to think that the Avant of prominence of the 

 mineralogists at our previous Meetings has been due to a becoming sense of 

 modesty resulting from the study of that science : this would be a mistake. The 

 fact is that a mineralogical memoir, dealing largely with numerical quantities and 

 involving great variety of experiment and technicality, may be read and studied, 

 but should never be heard ; like the mathematician, the mineralogist despairs of 

 making clear to an audience, especially a mixed one, the bearing of any researches 

 which have been made in his subject. But now that sixty-two years have elapsed 

 since the issue of Professor Whewell's Report, the time has perhaps at length 

 arrived when it is advisable, notwithstanding the difficulties surrounding an oral 

 treatment of Mineralogy, to attempt to give to the Association a faint idea of the 

 present position of the study of the subject. And if most of my hearers find that 

 the remarks are too technical to be in any great part intelligible, let them console 

 themselves with the reflection that, if the future at all resembles the past, only 

 Shalum and Ililpa can have to endure again that particular kind of mauvais quart 

 d'heure which is to precede the Geological Feast of to-day. 



Tlie Systems of Crystallisation. — At the time of the publication of Professor 

 Whewell's Report it had already been established by the researches of Rome de 



