108 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
Much of what has just been said may revive recollection of an old Swiss 
guide-book which praised the beneficence of Providence in directing 
the dreaded avalanches ‘ into the desolate and uninhabited valley of the 
Trumleten Thal and in sheltering from them the beautiful, fertile, and 
inhabited valley of Lauterbrunnen.’ However, it is far from my intention 
to imply that ‘everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds,’ 
but only to point out, in reviewing the long chain of events of which we 
see the present end-product in civilised man, that within the ken of 
the geologist there have been many critical stages in the earth’s history 
when any marked change in the conditions which then prevailed must 
inevitably have reacted profoundly upon the development of the human 
race when at long last it stepped out from the lower ranks to take the earth 
as its rightful possession. 
Conclusion. 
A review of the history and present position of geology shows that its 
better-known services to mankind have been in relation to the foundations 
on which industrial development and modern civilisation have been built 
—the mineral resources of the earth. These are many and various, all of 
them explored by geological methods. In every application of them 
we are again brought back to the primal essentials—water, iron, and fuel— 
and it is in the discovery and exploitation of these that the services of 
geology have been of especial value. 
But in the course of the development of both the economic and the 
scientific sides of geology the principles discovered and elaborated have 
fertilised and enriched human thought as expressed not only in other 
sciences but also in the sphere of literature. As it has become more 
precise and is able to give a more accurate and detailed picture of the 
stages through which the earth passed during the long story unfolded 
by the study of the stratified rocks, it has shown that the earth, though 
only a minute fraction of the visible universe, has had a wonderful and 
individual history of its own. The keynote of this history is evolution, 
the dream of philosophers from the earliest times, now passed from the 
realm of hypothesis into that of established theory. 
We are able to watch the evolution of the oceans and continents, 
of the distribution of landscape and climates, and of the long succession 
of living beings on the earth, throughout many millions of years. 
During these ages we see the action of the same chemical and physical 
laws as are now in operation, modified perhaps in scale or scope, 
producing geographical and biological results comparable with those 
of to-day. Hutton and Lyell discovered for us in the present a key 
to unlock the secrets of the past; the history thus revealed illuminates 
and explains many of the phenomena of the present. 
And the outcome of it all is to endow man with a simple and worthy 
conception of the story of creation, and to fill him with reverence for the 
wondrous scheme which, unrolling through the ages, without haste, 
without rest, has prepared the world for man’s dominion and made him 
fit and able to occupy it. 
T desire to express my thanks to Mr. G. W. Lamplugh, Professor E. W. 
MacBride, Professor W. G. Fearnsides, and Mr. G. 8. Sweeting for kind 
assistance in the preparation of this address. 
