460 Notices of Memoirs — Prof. HamMaz/s Address to 



In his address, he pointed out the numbers of Philosophical Societies 

 which by degrees sprung up in all parts of the kingdom ; and the 

 ])racticability, through the means of the Association, "including all 

 the scientific strength of Great Britain," " to point out the lines in 

 which the direction of science should move." 



In that year, 1831, Professor Sedgwick was president of the 

 Geological Society, and the Geological and Geographical Committee 

 of the Bi'itish Association recommended that geologists should 

 examine the truth of that part of the theory of Elie de Beaumont, 

 in its application to England, Scotland, and Ireland, which asserts 

 that the lines of disturbance of the strata assignable to the same age 

 are parallel ; that Professor Phillips be requested to draw up a 

 systematic catalogue of all the organized fossils of Great Britain and 

 Ireland; and that Mr. Eobert Stevenson, Civil Engineer, be re- 

 quested to prepare a report upon the waste and extension of the land 

 on the east coast of Britain, and the question of the permanence of the 

 relative level of the sea and land. 



In 1881 it seems strange to us that, in 1831, with William Smith's 

 map of " The Strata of England and Wales, with part Scotland," 

 before them, it should have been considered necessary to institute an 

 inquiry as to the truth of the general parallelism of disturbed strata, 

 which, in a limited area like England, had suffered upheaval at 

 different successive epochs ; and we may fancy the internal smile 

 with which Phillips, the nephew of Smith, regarded the needless 

 proposal. The masterpiece of the old land surveyor and civil 

 engineer remains to this day the foundation of all subsequent geo- 

 logical maps of England and Wales ; and as an unaided effort of 

 practical genius — for such it was — it seems impossible that it should 

 be surpassed, in spite of all the accuracy and detail which happily 

 modern science has introduced into modern geological maps. 



The first paj)er read at York, in the year 1831, was by Professor 

 Sedgwick, " On the general structure of the Mountains of the North 

 of England." This was followed by " Supplementary Observations 

 on the Structure of the Austrian and Bavarian Alps," by the Secre- 

 tary of the Society, Mr. Murchison, a memoir at that time of the 

 highest value, and still valuable, both in a stratigraphical point of 

 view, and also for the light which it th.i*ew on the nature of the dis- 

 turbances that originated the Alpine mountains, and their relations 

 in point of date to the far more ancient mountains of Bohemia. In 

 his elaborate address in the same year, on his retiring from the 

 President's chair, he largely expatiates on the parallelism of many of 

 the great lines of disturbance of what were then distinguished as 

 the more ancient schistose and greyivacTce mountains, and quotes the 

 authority of Elie de Beaumont for the statement, " that mountain 

 chains elevated at the same period of time, have a general parallelism 

 in the bearing of their component strata." On a great scale this 

 undoubtedly holds true, as, for example, in the case of the Scandi- 

 navian chain, and the more ancient PalfBOzoic rocks north of Scotland, 

 Cumberland, and even of great part of Wales. The same holds 

 good w^ith regard to the parallelism of the much more recent 



