ADDRESS. 1 1 



mainly out of a laudable desire to promote what was believed, to be the 

 cause of true religion, tbey helped to retard inquiry, and. exercised in that 

 respect a baneful influence on intellectual progress. 



It is the special glory of the Edinburgh school of geology to have 

 cast aside all this fanciful trifling. Hutton boldly proclaimed that it was 

 no part of his philosophy to account for the beginning of things. His 

 concern lay only with the evidence furnished by the earth itself as to its 

 origin. With the intuition of true genius he early perceived that the 

 only solid basis from which to explore what has taken place in bygone 

 time is a knowledge of what is taking place to-day. He thus founded 

 his system upon a careful study of the processes whereby geological 

 changes are now brought about. He felt assured that Nature must be 

 consistent and uniform in her working, and that only in proportion as 

 her operations at the present time are watched and understood will the 

 ancient history of the earth become intelligible. Thus, in his hands, the 

 investigation of the Present became the key to the interpretation of the 

 Past. The establishment of this great truth was the first step towards 

 the inauguration of a true science of the earth. The doctrine of uni- 

 formity of causation in Nature became the fruitful principle on which the 

 structure of modern geology could be built up. 



Fresh life was now breathed into the study of the earth. A new spirit 

 seemed to animate the advance along every pathway of inquiry. Facts 

 that had long been familiar came to possess a wider and deeper meaning 

 when their connection with each other was recognised as parts of one 

 great harmonious system of continuous change. In no department of 

 Nature, for example, was this broader vision more remarkably displayed 

 than in that wherein the circulation of water between land and sea plays 

 the most conspicuous part. From the earliest times men had watched the 

 coming of clouds, the fall of rain, the flow of rivers, and had recognised 

 that on this nicely adjusted machinery the beauty and fertility of the 

 land depend. But they now learnt that this beauty and fertility involve 

 a continual decay of the terrestrial surface ; that the soil is a measure of 

 this decay, and would cease to afford us maintenance were it not continu- 

 ally removed and renewed ; that through the ceaseless transport of soil 

 by rivers to the sea the face of the land is slowly lowered in level and 

 carved into mountain and valley, and that the materials thus borne out- 

 wards to the floor of the ocean are not lost but accumulate there to form 

 rocks, which in the end will be upraised into new lands. Decay and 

 renovation, in well-balanced proportions, were thus shown to be the 

 system on which the existence of the earth as a habitable globe had been 



