EARTH SCIENCES IN NINETEENTH CENTURY 687 



are seen to be fixed only in the sense tliat an express train seems to 

 be fixed before tlie instantaneous wink of a camera's eye. The ontog- 

 rapher may be bewildered when he realizes what the evolutionary 

 struggle for existence means to the individual; and when he thinks 

 how long the world was the scene of relentless strife before pity was 

 born, and how young and impotent pity is still, we may well wonder 

 whether we have yet learned much of omnipotence. Yet how superb 

 is the conception of the procession of life, never halting in its march 

 through the corridors of time. 



The addresses of the eight sections into which the department of 

 earth science is divided will so fully consider the special problems 

 with which we are concerned that it has seemed best here to deal only 

 with a few general considerations. I have therefore sought to con- 

 sider only the prospect from the point of view to which the progress 

 of a hundred years has led us. Vast as is the expanse over which 

 we look, innumerable as are the elements of the view, the chief 

 impression that we gain is one of well-ordered interaction in the con- 

 tinuous progress of events, all of whose momentary geographic phases, 

 with all their parts of earth, air, water, and responding hfe, are spread 

 upon successive pages in the great volume of geological records. 



W. M. Davis. 



Cambridge, Mass. 



