478 Reports and Proceeding* — 



I have occupied the main part of my address with reasons for the need 

 of conducting stratigraphical work with minute accuracy. Many of you 

 may suppose that the necessity for working in this way is so obvious that 

 it is a work of supererogation to insist upon it at great length ; hut ex- 

 perience has taught me that many geologists consider that close attention 

 to details is apt to deter workers from arriving at important generalizations, 

 in the present state of our science. A review of the past history of the 

 science shows that William Smith, and those who followed after him, 

 ohtained their most important results by steady application to details, 

 and subsequent generalization, whilst the work of* those who theorize 

 on insufficient data is apt to be of little avail, though often demanding 

 attention on account of its very daring, and because of the power of some 

 writers to place erroneous views in an attractive light, just as 



".'... the sim can fling 

 Colours as bright on exhalations bred 

 By weedy pool or pestilential swamp, 

 As on the rivulet, sparkling where it runs, 

 Or the pellucid lake." 



Nor is there any reason to suppose that it will be otherwise in the future, 

 and I am not one of those who consider that the brilliant discoveries were 

 the exclusive reward of the pioneers in our science, and that labourers of 

 the present day must be contented with the gleanings of their harvest ; 

 on the contrary, the discoveries which await the geologist will probably 

 be as striking as are those which he has made in the past. The onward 

 march of science is a rhythmic movement, with now a period of steady 

 labour, anon a more rapid advance in our knowledge. It would perhaps 

 be going too far to say that, so far as our science is concerned, we are 

 living in a period rather of the former than of the latter character, 

 though no great geological discovery has recently affected human thought 

 in the way in which it was affected by the proofs of the antiquity of man, 

 and by the publication of " The Origin of Species." If, however, we are 

 to some extent gathering materials, rather than drawing far-reaching 

 conclusions from them, I believe this is largely due to the great expansion 

 which our science has undergone in recent years. It has been said that 

 geology is "not so much one science, as the application of all the physical 

 sciences to the examination and description of the structure of the earth, 

 the investigation of the agencies concerned in the production of that 

 structure, and the history of their action " ; and the application of other 

 sciences to the elucidation of the history of our globe has been so greatly 

 extended of recent years, that we are ajrt to lose sight of the fact that 

 geology is in itself a science, and that it is the special province of the 

 geologist to get his facts at first hand from examination of the earth. 

 The spectroscope and the telescope tell the geologist much ; but his proper 

 instrument is the hammer, and the motto of every geologist should be that 

 which has been adopted for the Geological Congress — "Mente et malleo." 



At the risk of being compared to a child playing with edge tools, I 

 cannot help referring to the bearing of modern stratigraphical research on 

 the suggested replacement of a school of uniformitarianism by one of 

 evolution. The distinguished advocate of Evolutionism, who addressed 

 the Geological Society in 1869 upon the modern schools of geological 

 thought, spoke of the school of evolution as though it were midway 

 between those of uniformitarianism and catastrophism, as indeed it is 

 logically, though, considering the tenets of the upholders of catastrophism, 

 as opposed to those of uniformitarianism, at the time of that address, 

 there is no doubt that evolutionism was rather a modification of the 

 uniformitarianism of the period than intermediate between it and catas- 

 trophism, which was then practically extinct, at any rate in Britain. One 



