Association of American Geologists and Naturalists. 227 



Illation from every quarter hailed and cheered onward the new- 

 born institution, which like Hercules, was vigorous even in its 

 infancy, and in its advancing maturity has already performed nu- 

 merous and most important labors. Its untiring activity, its con- 

 centrated scientific talent and zeal, its munificent endowments, 

 and its splendid success, have for more than a third of a century, 

 given it universal and richly deserved celebrity. We cannot on 

 the present occasion, even mention the names of its most conspic- 

 uous members, and they stand in no need of our commemoration, 

 for their worthy deeds are fully recorded and amply illustrated in 

 the now numerous quartos of the Society's Transactions. 



GEOLOGY IN SCOTLAND. 



Returning to my personal narrative in Britain, I beg leave to re- 

 mark, that having eagerly seized upon every opportunity of mak- 

 ing observations in geology, I had learned in the mines and 

 mining districts, h&io and ivhat to observe ; and in passing through 

 the length and breadth of England in four difierent directions, I 

 was almost never without some instructive field before me. 

 Glancing' at the coal regions of the middle and northern coun- 

 ties, at the chalk downs and escarpments of Wiltshire and the 

 Isle of Wight, at the quarries and cliffs of hmestone and oolite 

 of Bristol and Bath, at the sandstone quarries of Liverpool, the 

 granite tors and sea-beaten precipices of Cornwall and the Lands 

 End, the gravel pits and clays of the London basin, and the lime- 

 kilns of Gravesend, — none of these scenes were without instruc- 

 tion to one whose curiosity was awakened and whose youthful 

 enthusiasm was kindled by vivid perceptions of the beauty and 

 grandeur of geology. Nor was a view of the boundless green 

 meadows of Holland — a vast alluvial with immense beds of peat, 

 redeemed from an ocean, whose waves were held in sullen repulse 

 by artificial dykes and natural mounds of sand, thrown up by the 

 billows themselves, along the seaward line of coast ; — nor were 

 the interminable sandy plains of Dutch Brabant, nor the rural lux- 

 uriance of the Austrian Netherlands, without geological utility, 

 since no scene, however tame to a common eye, is without in- 

 struction to a geologist. 



A rapid transit, late in November, 1805, through the fens of 

 Cambridgeshire and the picturesque wolds of Yorkshire, brought 

 me across the Tweed to Scotland, to view the bleak and naked 

 hills of Berwickshire, the fertile fields of Mid Lothian, and the 



