Reports and Proceedings. 421 
duty, allow me to congratulate you on the amount of substantial 
work that has been accomplished since our meeting in November. 
During no former session have so many papers been read, or so large 
an amount of instructive discussion elicited. Nor have these papers, 
as sometimes complained of, been mere résumés or re-echoes of other 
people’s opinions, but in reality the results of much local research 
and minute personal observation. We have had subjects ranging from 
the most ancient to the most recent geological periods—papers on 
the Silurians of Dumfriesshire and the Pentlands, the Carboniferous 
formations of Lanark and the Lothians, the Chalk-beds of England 
and the calcareous ooze of existing seas, the local drifts and denu- 
dations of the Glacial Period, the erratics of Northern Germany, 
and the upraised beaches of the Firth of Forth. Upon subjects so 
vast and varied, there was necessarily some diversity of opinion; 
but in no instance has difference of opinion been expressed in any 
other spirit than to elicit the truth and establish a satisfactory con- 
clusion. One great merit, indeed, of most of the papers we have 
heard this winter has been what I may term their thorough indivi- 
duality,—each author expressing his own opinion without stint, and 
submitting it to the equally candid criticism of his fellows. And 
this, Tam sure you will agree with me, is no mean merit. As in 
nature there is no progress without action and reaction, and no 
action without a difference, so in moral and intellectual matters there 
can be no progress without those activities which arise from the 
differences of fully and freely expressed individualism. Each of us 
has his own modes of observation and his own modes of thought, 
just as he has his own style of face or peculiarity of body; and 
where this individualism is allowed to manifest itself, depend upon 
it there will be differences of opinion, and the result will be activity 
and progress. On the other hand, where individualism subordinates 
itself to authority and conventionality, action ceases and progress 
comes to an end. Let us continue, then, to cultivate this original 
gift of individualism, expressing the truth as it appears to us, yet 
ever remembering that for want of perfect knowledge we are liable 
to error, and that charity is ever due to those who see not as we see, 
or believe not as we may believe. And now that the winter-session 
is over, and the summer-excursions are at hand, I trust that the 
same spirit will be manifested in all our field-procedure. It may be 
objected by some that the excursions set down on the card are too 
numerous, and most of them over ground already well explored and 
familiar. In a Society such as ours, where many of the members 
are daily engaged in business, the number of excursions increases 
the chance of being present at some; and there is really in Geology 
no field so familiar but new facts may be gleaned, or old errors of 
observation or of inference may be corrected. Besides, the man who 
knows his own immediate district thoroughly has the best prelimi- 
nary training for the comprehension of the geology of other lands. 
The denudations and superficial outlines in the neighbourhood of 
Edinburgh are the types of similar phenomena in other districts ; the 
upheavals, outbursts, and interstratifications of Arthur’s Seat, the 
