774 REPORT—1896. 
I might give other instances," but have chosen some striking ones, four of 
which especially illustrate the great advances which are being made in the study 
of the paleontology of the invertebrates by our American brethren. 
I have occupied the main part of my address with reasons for the need of con- 
ducting stratigraphical work with minute accuracy. Many of you may suppose 
that the necessity for working in this way is so obvious that itisa work of 
supererogation to insist upon it at great length; but experience has taught me 
that many geologists consider that close attention to details is apt to deter 
workers from arriving at important generalisations in the present state of our 
science, A review of the past history of the science shows that William 
Smith, and those who followed after him, obtained their most important 
results by steady application to details, and subsequent generalisation, whilst 
the work of those who theorise on insufficient data is apt to be of little 
avail, though often demanding attention on account of its very daring, and 
because of the power of some writers to place erroneous views in an attractive 
light, just as ; 
*, . . the sun can fling 
Colours as bright on exhalations bred 
By weedy pool or pestilential swamp, 
As on the rivulet, sparkling where it runs, 
Or the pellucid lake.’ 
Nor is there any reason to suppose that it will be otherwise in the future; and I 
am not one of those who consider that the brilliant discoveries were the exclusive 
reward of the pioneers in our science, and that labourers of the present day must 
be contented with the gleanings of their harvest; on the contrary, the discoveries 
which await the geologist will probably be as striking as are those which he has 
made in the past. The onward march of science is a rhythmic movement, with 
now a period of steady labour, anon a more rapid advance in our knowledge. It 
would perhaps be going too far to say that, so far as our science is concerned, we 
are living in a period rather of the former than of the latter character, though no 
great geological discovery has recently affected human thought in the way in 
which it was affected by the proofs of the antiquity of man, and by the publication 
of ‘The Origin of Species.’ If, however, we are to some extent gathering materials, 
rather than drawing far-reaching conclusions from them, I believe this is largely 
due to the great expansion which our science has undergone in recent years. It 
has been said that geology is ‘not so much one science, as the application of all 
the physical sciences to the examination and description of the structure of the 
earth, the investigation of the agencies concerned in the production of that struc- 
ture, and the history of their action’; and the application of other sciences to the 
elucidation of the history of our globe has been so greatly extended of recent years 
that we are apt to lose sight of the fact that geology is in itself a science, and that 
it is the special province of the geologist to get his facts at first hand from exami- 
nation of the earth. The spectroscope and the telescope tell the geologist much ; 
but his proper instrument is the hammer, and the motto of every geologist should 
be that which has been adopted for the Geological Congress, ‘ Mente et malleo.’ 
At the risk of being compared to a child playing with edged tools, I cannot 
help referring to the bearing of modern stratigraphical research on the suggested 
replacement of a school of uniformitarianism by one of evolution. The distin- 
guished advocate of evolutionism, who addressed the Geological Society in 1869 
upon the modern schools of geological thought, spoke of the school of evolution as 
though it were midway between those of uniformitarianism and catastrophism, as 
1 #g., the following papers treating of the Cephalopoda :—A. Hyatt, ‘ Genesis 
of the Arietide,’ Smithsonian Contributions, vol. xxvi. 1889; M. Neumayr, Jura- 
Studien L, ‘ Ueber Phylloceraten,’ Jahrb.' der hk. k. Geol. Reichsanst., vol. xxi. 1871, 
p- 297; L. Wiirtenberger, ‘Studien iiber die Stammesgeschichte der Ammoniten,’ 
Leipzig, 1880; S. S. Buckman, ‘A Monograph of the Inferior Qolite Ammonites of 
the British Islands,’ 1887 (Monogr. Paleontographical Soc.). ; 
