ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. XXIU 



gical formations, — but merits last for ever, for through them science 

 cannot fail to advance. Von Buch was one of the first to repudiate 

 the mistaken views of his master, but he avowedly did so by the very 

 spirit and method of research which he had cherished and learned at 

 the school of Freiberg. 



Von Buch was only eighteen years of age when he commenced his 

 long series of contributions to the literature of science. His first 

 paper was "A Mineralogical Description of the Carlsbad Region,'* 

 printed anonymously in 1792. Four years afterwards he produced 

 his " Contribution to a Mineralogical Description of Landeck," and 

 soon after a similar treatise for Silesia, accompanied by a geological 

 map. His merits as an accurate observer and clear describer were 

 manifested in these early productions. 



In the now venerable and ever-illustrious Humboldt he found a 

 friend and fellow-student, with a kindred mind and genius, and 

 these two great men worked together early in life. At the close of 

 the last century they visited the Alps and Italy in company, and 

 there it was that Von Buch commenced those researches into the 

 geological phsenomena of volcanoes that alone would have immor- 

 talized his name. He founded a great part of what may be termed 

 the Science of Volcanoes, and gradually divesting himself, by the 

 legitimate process of extended observation, of Wernerian theories, 

 worked out this most interesting section of geology in the countries 

 most likely to enable him to solve the many problems it presents. 

 Italy, Central France, the trap districts of Germany and Scotland, 

 and eventually, in 1815, the Canary Islands were submitted by him 

 to close personal inspection ; with what results I need not, in this 

 place, recall. Sufiice to say, that his great work, ' The Physical De- 

 scription of the Canary Islands,' will long remain an enduring monu- 

 ment of his labours and his generalizations. The theory of Craters 

 of Elevation was one of the most influential of the doctrines broached 

 by him after his careful and prolonged study of igneous phaenomena. 

 But during, the course of these peculiar studies his mind was not 

 confined to them, and other subjects of equal importance engaged a 

 portion of his attention with as valuable results. In 1806, whilst 

 Europe was torn by revolutions among men. Von Buch retired to 

 the wilds of Scandinavia, there to study the greater revolutions of 

 Nature. During a two-years' travel in Norway, Sweden, and Lap- 

 land, his inquisitive spirit did not fail to evolve new subjects for 

 its speculations. What he saw there forced him to abandon the 

 belief in the necessarily primitive date of granites, and his observation 

 of the gradual rise of the Scandinavian area and its attendant phaeno- 

 mena, previously only imperfectly noticed and quite misunderstood, 

 has been a fruitful source of fresh chapters in geology. How many 

 of the best disquisitions of our time could trace their roots to these 

 observations of Von Buch ! 



The first Geological Map of Germany appeared in 1824. Von 

 Buch's name is not appended to it, but it is known that he was the 

 compiler and author. The impulse to local geology given by a 

 first raap> and the difficulties with, which the constructor jias iieces?; 



