ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. ClU 



into the Red Crag sea can indeed be scarcely doubted ; but let it be 

 remembered that no other than a land barrier, such as that sug- 

 gested by Mr. Austen, could have been efficient for such a purpose, 

 as the advance of mollusca, or at least the progressive transport of 

 their ova, could not have been stopped by a mere shallowing of the 

 water ; and, if such a land barrier had existed to so late a period, each 

 previous elevation ought to have induced similar climatal changes 

 in the tertiary deposits then forming. In making these remarks, 

 and many more might be added, I am only desirous to impress 

 upon everyone the extreme difficulty which must ever attend upon 

 attempts to trace the physical phsenomena of past geological epochs, 

 and to do honour to those w^ho are daring enough to undertake a 

 labour so arduous. 



At this point I may mention the opinion of M. Ami Bone, one 

 of our foreign members, that the English Channel has not been 

 formed by excavation alone, through the action of water, but owes 

 its origin to a line of fissure or disturbance. The remarks which 

 have already been made all tend to support this view ; but the great 

 question, at what precise epoch internal disturbance produced this 

 fissure, requires still further investigation before it can be satisfactorily 

 answered. 



In addition to the paper already noticed, we are indebted to our 

 most able and zealous fellow-member, Mr. Godwin-Austen, for having 

 so well performed the duties of a friend and of a geologist, by editing 

 the last work of the distinguished and never-to-be-forgotten (for how 

 can the labours of such a man ever die from memory?) Edward 

 Forbes. 



The indefatigable Prestwich is quoted by Forbes as the person 

 on whose published researches he intended mainly to found his own, 

 though he gives the warmest praise to the late Thomas Webster, 

 as the first person, who, at a time when geological science was in 

 England just beginning to assume a name and character, compre- 

 hended the general nature of these curious and varied deposits. 



The researches of Cuvier and Brongniart had brought to light 

 the curious fact, that in the basin of Paris there exists a succession 

 of beds, which exhibit alternately marine and freshwater deposits, 

 and this wonder, as it was then considered, was shown by Webster 

 to be repeated in the Isle of Wight, and the general identity of the 

 deposits determined. Ever since that period it has been the eifort 

 of some of our most able geologists to reduce the whole series of 

 beds, collectively and individually, into coordination with the foreign 

 equivalents, a labour of no ordinary kind ; for however easy it may 

 be to coordinate a whole system in one country with that of another, 

 few operations are more difficult, or require more care and patience, 

 than to compare every petty link in a great succession of beds 

 of one country with tliat which was forming exactly at the same 

 epoch in another ; the sand which was washed up on one shore, 

 perhaps even the sand-dune which was blown up on it, at the same 

 instant when a calcareous deposit was precipitating from the water, 

 or a mud-bank forming at some other and distant point ; indeed, [ 



