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rable collections of that capital, and the illustrious naturalists who 

 are there assembled, we confidently look to this association for results 

 which shall greatly affect the future history of our science. With 

 ordinary fortune it can hardly fail to become a great central point of 

 union, where geologists from all the nations of Europe may from time 

 to time meet together with no rivalry but in the love of truth. 



Our studies, Gentlemen, have no part in those bad passions by 

 which mankind are held asunder; the boundaries of tribes and 

 nations are blotted out from our maps; the latest revolutions we treat 

 of are anterior to the records of our race, and compared with the 

 least of the monuments which we decipher, all the works of man's 

 hand vanish out of sight. If we have advanced with a vigorous 

 step for the last fifteen years, it has been during the peace of the 

 civilized world. The foundations on which we build are so widely 

 parted, that we require nothing less than a free range through all 

 the kingdoms of the earth ; and if anything should occur to 

 cloud our prospects or retard our progress, it must be accom- 

 panied by some moral plague which will desolate the face of Eu- 

 rope. Against the visitation of such a calamity, every man whom 

 I now address will join with me in heartfelt aspirations. 



Geology is a science of observation : and it is a humiliating fact, 

 forced upon us at every step of our progress, that the material 

 combinations we investigate and attempt to classify are too rude 

 and ill defined to be regarded as the appreciable results of any 

 simple law of nature. Some great and simple problems in physics 

 have however so immediate a connexion with the structure of the 

 earth, that we may almost claim their solutions for our own. 



The form put on by a fluid body in rotation is an abstract ques- 

 tion, which might or might not have any real application to the 

 bodies of our solar system. But direct geodesic observations, as 

 well as the relative position of land and water, prove that the stra- 

 tified matter on the crust of the earth is deposited in near confor- 

 mity to the surface of a true spheroid of rotation. Here then we 

 have, in spite of one of the arbitrary dogmas of the Huttonian 

 theory, an indication of a primeval fluidity before the commence* 

 ment of any one phenomenon coming within the direct specu- 

 lations of geology. And again, the direct phenomena of geology 

 are in the strictest harmony with this conclusion. For, after passing 

 through a few stages of stratified matter, formed by the degradation 

 of matter in a prior state of solidity, we are conducted to other un- 

 stratified masses with that crystalline structure which implies an 

 anterior fluidity — in some cases unequivocally, and in all cases pro- 

 bably, derived from the solvent power of heat. 



But if the earth ever existed in any state approaching to igne- 

 ous fusion, it must have undergone a great diminution of tem- 

 perature before it was fitted for the habitation of any organized 

 being. And here again geological facts are at least in a general 

 accordance with the hypothesis ; for the forms of the living beings 

 entombed among the ancient strata, not only seem to indicate a 



