26 REPORT— 1892. 



the Nortli Sea. Here the curtain drops upon our taoving pageant, for in 

 the geological record of this part of the country an enormous gap occurs 

 before the coming of the Ice Age. 



When once more the spectacle resumes its movement the scene is- 

 found to have utterly changed. The familiar hills and valleys of the 

 Lothians have disappeared. Dense jungles of a strange vegetation — 

 tall reeds, club-mosses, and tree-ferns — spread over the steaming swamps 

 that stretch for leagues in all directions. Broad lagoons and open seas 

 are dotted with little volcanic cones which throw out their streams of 

 lava and showers of ashes. Beyond these, in dimmer outline and older in 

 date, we descry a wide lake or inland sea, covering the whole midland 

 valley and marked with long lines of active volcanoes, some of them several 

 thousand feet in height. And still further and fainter over the same 

 region, we may catch a glimpse of that still earlier expanse of sea which 

 ill Silurian times overspread most of Britain. But beyond this scene our 

 vision fails. We have reached the limit across which no geological 

 evidence exists to lead the imagination into the primeval darkness 

 beyond. 



Such in briefest outline is the succession of mental pictures which 

 modern science enables us to frame out of the landscapes around Edin- 

 burgh. They may be taken as illustrations of what may be drawn, and 

 sometimes with even greater fulness and vividness, from any district in 

 these islands. I cite them especially because of their local interest 

 in connection with the present meeting of the Association, and because 

 the rocks that yield them gave inspiration to those great masters whose 

 claims on our recollection, not least for their explanation of the origin of 

 scenery, I have tried to recount this evening. But I am further impelled 

 to dwell on these scenes from an overmastering personal feeling to which 

 I trust I may be permitted to give expression. It was these green hills 

 and grey crags that gave me in boyhood the impulse that has furnished 

 the work and joy of my life. To them, amid changes of scene and 

 surroundings, my heart ever fondly turns, and here I desire gratefully to 

 acknowledge that it is to their influence that I am indebted for any claim 

 I may possess to stand in the proud position in which your choice has 

 placed me. 



