354 THE PROBLEM OF THE LIZARD ROCKS. 



the world who are expected to attend the triennial International 

 Greologieal Congress in London have also received invitations to 

 attend the Bath meeting of the British Association ; and in as- 

 much as the most prominent subject to be discussed at the Inter- 

 national congress is that of '' crytalline schists,'''' the special interest 

 of the members is likely to be aroused in connection with a 

 subject to which the Lizard's rocks might furnish a highly- 

 interesting contribution. 



With these eventualities in view, and in a measure locally 

 called upon to be prepared to answer questions which might be 

 put to us in connection with the very ground under our feet, we 

 may well ask ourselves, what answers are we prepared to give 

 to such questions. ? 



Delabeche was an admirable observer, an unassailable 

 stratigraphical geologist, of whom it may be said, as Hugh 

 Miller said of Sir Roderick Murchison, that when he laid down 

 a line across a country it was laid down for ever ; but Delabeche, 

 and Sedgwick, and Buckland, and their contemporaries belonged 

 to the pre-chemical and pre-microscopical age of geology ; they 

 held theories no longer tenable in their entirety, — they could read 

 and mark down and expound to us as it were the heads of 

 chapters — but they had not penetrated to the sub-divisions and 

 the separate pages and the minute collateral questions which a 

 long succession of geological workers has spelt out for us since 

 then, and which they are even now spelling out for us more 

 earnestly and more rapidly than ever. Admirable and pains- 

 taking as are the researches and conclusions of Professor Bonney, 

 they are in a manner already antiquated and overlapped by more 

 recent researches, but it could not be said of even of the most 

 recent of these that they have either superseded former labours 

 or established a more conclusive state of things. 



Great as have been the strides of geology when measured 

 by the last half century, they have been at an immensely 

 accelerated rate within the last decade, and are still progressing 

 at that rate. Chemistry, microscopy, dynamics have been con- 

 centrated upon geology, and have shed a fierce new light upon 

 questions considered settled, or have raised entirely new issues 

 and opened up fresh paths of enquiry. 



