42 Reports and Proceedings — Mr. A. Geikie's Address 



inquiry, wherein much, laseful work remained to be accomplished. 

 The first of these related to the study of organic remains, which, in 

 the opinion of the speaker, was too much dissociated from that of 

 the strata in which they are preserved. He thought that the palse- 

 ontology of each geological formation should be, as far as possible, 

 the natural history of a certain period of the past life of the globe. 

 We should try to discover from the fossil remains more of the 

 general character of the contemporaneous fauna and flora ; the 

 nature of the sea-bottom or land-surface on which they flourished ; 

 their various modes of growth ; their distribution in space as well 

 as in time ; the light which they cast upon changes in the inorganic 

 world, and the influence of these changes upon them ; the causes of 

 their decay as individuals and as species, and the circumstances 

 under which they had been finally entombed. Mr. Geikie illustrated 

 this subject from the rocks of the central valley of Scotland. He 

 then passed on to the second topic, which related to the mineral 

 structure of rocks, or petrography. That branch of the science had 

 fallen into strange neglect in this country. After indicating what 

 had been done, and what was now doing in Germany, in that de- 

 partment, he pointed out the special way in which it lay open to 

 observers in Scotland, and pressed upon the Society the desirability 

 of cultivating it. The third branch of his address bore on the 

 balance of the various forces which have been instrumental iu 

 modifying the surface of the earth. Observers in Britain, he said, 

 enjoyed special advantages when they set themselves to investigate 

 this question. The completeness of their geological series, the 

 diversities of configuration in their country, the extent of their 

 coast line, the multiplicity and variety of their brooks and rivers, 

 all conspired to aid them. On the other hand, they were apt, from 

 this very completeness of their opportunities, to take a local and 

 limited view of the phenomena. This, he thought, had really 

 happened in the case of their estimate of the potency of the sea as 

 a geological agent. Their position as islanders had led them to 

 take an exaggerated view of the results attributable to the waves in 

 the general economy of nature, and to undervalue the power of 

 rains, springs, frosts, and rivers, which in this country do not 

 produce the changes which they efi'ect elsewhere. He pointed out 

 how vast was the extent of coast-line where the sea did not reach 

 the solid framework of the land, but was barred back by long lines 

 of alluvial deposit — the waste of the land brought down by the 

 streams. The sea in these instances, although perpetually wasting 

 the sandbars, did not perceptibly encroach on the land, for the bars 

 were constantly being renewed from behind. The land, though not 

 diminishing in breadth, was inch by inch sinking in height, the 

 power of the sea being no more than equal to sweeping away the 

 detritus brought down to the coast by the drainage from the interior. 

 Although seemingly paradoxical, he yet believed that, in the general 

 balance of forces, the influence of the ocean is more conservative 

 than destructive, there being a greater area of rock under the sea, 

 and preserved there from that universal corrosion and i-omoval 



