﻿ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. Ixiii 



firmation would be found by continued researches." The paper gave 

 rise to an animated discussion ; and M. Lartet, one of the speakers, 

 stated that he had visited the cavern, and had examined the collec- 

 tions of M. de Vibraye, whose identifications he confirmed, and that 

 he was of opinion that the drift in which they were found is of the 

 same age as that of St. Acheul. 



The confirmation of the correctness of the conclusions to which 

 M. Boucher de Perthes had arrived, which he had published ten 

 years before, but which, by a strange unreasoning incredulity not 

 very creditable to the scientific men of all countries, had been suffered 

 to be neglected, is of an importance that cannot be overrated, inas- 

 much as it is calculated to remove a prejudice that has long prevailed 

 among geologists the least timid in forming conclusions, and as it bids 

 fair to eradicate one of a similar nature deeply rooted in the minds 

 of even the educated part of the general public. 



It has been well remarked by the Eev. Mr. Kenrick, in his interest- 

 ing essay on Primaeval History, that, " As we can assign no absolute 

 date to the introduction of man into the world, nor even decide with 

 confidence whether this took place by simultaneous or successive acts 

 of creative power, so it is impossible to define the time which he 

 occupied in advancing from his primaeval condition to that in which 

 he appears at the commencement of history*." Now, although we 

 are unable to give any numerical expression to the time of the occur- 

 rence of events that have preceded all historical records of traditions, 

 we may arrive at a very firm conviction that they must have been ex- 

 tremely remote, by a consideration of the very slow process by which 

 changes take place on the surface of the land, and in the forms of 

 the coasts which are evidently altered by the wearing forces of the 

 atmosphere and the sea, without any cataclysmal action. The long 

 duration of the vegetable soil and its covering of turf and forest, and 

 the resistance to the wearing effects of the weather by many human, 

 works in stone have been well pointed out by M. Elie de Beaumont f. 

 He observes that plants fixing by their roots the superficial soil add 

 greatly to its stability, — that the natural state of the globe has been 

 to be covered with vegetation, — that its surface has been covered by 

 turf or by forests, — that when we see turf on a mountain-slope we 

 may affirm that it has been almost coeval with the slope, and that 

 it has preserved the soil it covers for thousands of years, — that the 

 soil surrounding Cyclopean and Druidical monuments, which have 

 existed for more than 2000 years, has undergone no change either 

 of increase or decrease, — that the existence of a tree shows that the 

 surface of the vegetable soil has undergone no sensible change during 

 the growth of the tree, and that there are trees which have existed 

 for many centuries." Professor Phillips in his recent publication 

 in reference to the slow process by which peat accumulates, has the 

 following passages:— " Man and the works of man have been pre- 



* An Essay on Primaeval History. By John Kenrick, M.A. London: 

 Fellowes, 1846. 



f Lecjons de Greologie Pratique, Leijon 5. 



J Life on the Earth, its origin and succession, pp. 48, 49. I860. 



