﻿ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. Xxix 



Sir Robert Peel will always deserve to be gratefully remem- 

 bered by Englishmen devoted to philosophical pursuits, as the first 

 Prime Minister of this country, who, amidst the distractions of an 

 active political career, made it a leading object of his thoughts to con- 

 sider how the patronage of Government might be made available to 

 the advancement of science and natural history. He was fully aware, 

 as he stated to us, in an eloquent speech addressed to the Members of 

 this Society at our Anniversary Meeting in 1849, that a Statesman 

 who has such an end in view must be on his guard not to impair the 

 personal independence of scientific men, while he endeavours to for- 

 ward or reward their labours. He had no doubt reflected that the 

 free expression of opinion had sometimes been fettered both in litera- 

 ture and science by the authority unduly usurped by official rank ; 

 and that the corporation spirit of endowed academies has sometimes 

 been a source of division and jealousy among scientific men. 



The education of Sir Robert Peel had not given him an early bias 

 towards scientific studies, but, in proportion as his mind ripened and 

 he had leisure for reading, he appreciated more and more their import- 

 ance; and several of our Members who were among his personal 

 friends well know that Geology engaged a full share of his attention. 

 Yet few of us were prepared to find him capable of writing such a 

 letter as that which has been published since his death, addressed to 

 his relative the Dean of York, who had requested him to criticise his 

 " System of Geology." In this remarkable letter we find Sir Robert 

 zealously contending against the dogma that a single great convulsion 

 might account for all the changes of the earth's crust. He begins 

 by expressing his conviction of the truth " of the conclusions to which 

 the most eminent men of all countries had gradually arrived after un- 

 remitting inquiry and profound reflection ; " and then proceeds to 

 argue that geological revolutions " had been the slow product, some 

 of chemical, others of mechanical agencies." He instances a coal- 

 field with its numerous strata of coal, all of vegetable origin and 

 separated by beds of a different character, each distinguished from 

 the other by some peculiarity of structure or organic remains, and 

 he refers to the submergence of land and the formation upon it of 

 new strata*. It is no small testimony to the vigour and clearness 



* Colburn's New Monthly Mag., January 1851, p. 10. 



