810 REPORT— 1892. 



tbe shores of the Red Sea, and vast tracts of Southern Asia, are the chief earth- 

 quake regions of the globe. It may he noted, further, that shocks are not only- 

 most frequent hut most intense in the neighbourhood of the sea. They appear to 

 oi'iginate sometimes in the volcanic ridges and coastal ranges, sometimes under the 

 floor of the sea itself. Now earthquakes, volcanoes, and uplifts are all expressions 

 of the one great fundamental fact that the earth is a cooling and contracting body, 

 and they indicate the lines of weakness along which the enormous pressures and 

 strains induced by the subsidence of the crust upon its nucleus find relief. We 

 cannot tell why the coast-lands of the Atlantic should have attained at so early a 

 period a stage of relative stability — why no axial uplifts should have been deve- 

 loped along their margins since Palasozoic times. It may be that relief has been 

 found in the wrinkling-up of the floor of the oceanic trough, and consequent forma- 

 tion of the Dolphin Ridge and other great submarine foldings of the crust; and it 

 is possible that the growth of similar great ridges and wrinkles upon the bed of 

 the Pacific may in like manner relieve the coast-lands of that vast ocean, and pre- 

 vent the foi'mation of younger iiplifts along their borders. 



I have already remarked that two kinds of elevatory movements of the crust 

 are recognised by geologists — namely, axial and regional uplifts. Some, however, 

 are beginning to doubt, with Professor Suess, whether any vast regional uplifts are 

 ])ossible. Yet the view that would attribute all such apparent elevations of the land 

 to subsidence of the crust under tbe great oceanic troughs is not without its diffi- 

 culties. Former sea-margins of very recent geological age occur in all latitudes, and 

 if we are to explain these by sub-oceanic depression, this will compel us to admit, as 

 Suess has remarked, a general lowering of the sea-level of upwards of 1,000 feet. 

 But it is difficult to believe that the sea-floor could have subsided to such an extent 

 in recent times. Suess thinks it is much more probable that the high-level beaches of 

 tropical regions are not contemporaneous with those of higher latitudes, and that 

 the phenomena are best explained by his hypothesis of a secular movement of the 

 ocean— the water being, as he contends, alternately heaped up at the equator and 

 the poles. The strand-lines in high latitudes, however, are certainly connected 

 with glaciation in some way not yet understood ; and if it cannot be confidently 

 affirmed that they indicate regional movements of the land, the evidence, neverthe- 

 less, seems to point in that direction. 



In concluding this impei'fect outline-sketch of a large subject, I ought perhaps 

 to apologise for having trespassed so much upon the domains of geology. But in 

 doing so I have only followed the example of geologists themselves, whose div.aga- 

 tions in territories adjoining their own are naturally not infrequent. From much 

 that I have said, it will be gathered that with regard to the causes of many 

 coastal changes we are still groping in the dark. It seems not unlikely, however, 

 that as light increases we may be compelled to modify the view that all oscillations 

 of the sea-level are due to movements of the lithosphere alone. That is a very 

 heretical suggestion ; but that a great deal can be said for it anyone will admit 

 after a candid perusal of Suess's monumental work, ' Das Antlitz der Erde.' 



The following Papers were read : — 



1. First Ascent of the Oraefa Jokull, Iceland. By F. W. W. Howell. 

 [Will be published in the ' Proceedings of the E.G.S.'] 



2. Place-names. By Dr. J. Bukgess. 



Dr. Burgess, like most Oriental scholars, took exception to the phonetic principle 

 in rendering the place-names of countries which have a native literature. It was 

 more scholarly and more satisfactory, he maintained, to adopt a definite translitera- 

 tion of each foreign alphabet, based, of course, on the best authorised form of the 

 name in each instance. Dealing more particularly with the question of Scottish 

 place-names, he refen-ed at some length to the errors in Gaelic spelling found on 



