SECTION C— GEOLOGY. 



THE CONTACTS OF GEOLOGY : THE 

 ICE AGE AND EARLY MAN IN BRITAIN 



ADDRESS BY 



PROF. P. G. H. BOSWELL, D.Sc, F.R.S., 



PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION. 



Geology in its Modern Aspects. 



One of the most attractive features of geology is the number of its contacts 

 with other sciences and with the industrial arts. In this respect students 

 of our science may account themselves fortunate or otherwise, according 

 to their point of view and degree of maturity. We need only call to mind 

 the recent progress in sciences with which geology makes contact to 

 realise that the geologist is required, by the very breadth of his interests, 

 to keep acquainted with such important advances in knowledge ; nor is 

 it accounted to him for virtue to keep to a path of narrow specialisation, 

 unmindful of the limitations which they must necessarily impose. 



Geology is primarily an observational science. Only to a limited 

 extent at present are its data amenable to mathematical treatment. None 

 the less, its ' laws ' are based on foundations which, established firmly as 

 many of them were nearly a hundred years ago, have survived the searching 

 tests of a century's observations, and have been strengthened in no small 

 measure by the fulfilment of divers predictions. Discoveries that 

 revolutionise the very basis of thought must, from the nature of our sub- 

 ject, be few and far between, and it is therefore unnecessary to discuss the 

 fact that geologists have not for many decades aroused the scientific 

 world by sensational announcements. The development of our science 

 from close observations of innumerable field-phenomena and from 

 cautiously drawn inferences, has been guided by the principle that ' the 

 present is the key to the past.' But this is not to say that startling and 

 fascinating hypotheses have been lacking. I need only cite those of 

 Continental Drift and the Nappe Theory of Mountain-building. It has 

 rather made for strength in our science that these flights of imagination 

 have been looked at askance, after the traditional manner of British 

 geologists ; and some attractive hypotheses have not emerged unscathed 

 after careful study in the cold light of accumulated facts. 



Trends in geological thought during the past century have often been 

 the subject of presidential addresses. My immediate predecessor in this 

 chair appropriately compared the geological problems of 183 1 with those 

 in the succeeding three quarter-centuries. On an earlier occasion 

 Prof. W. J. Sollas, in his characteristically felicitous and convincing 



