ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. XXlX 



assuredly fail to bring his observations as true tests of the different 

 views with which the subject is at present perplexed. Let us not 

 seek for mere possibilities in support of antecedent opinions, but sub- 

 mit our views constantly to the test of enlarged experience and care- 

 ful induction. There may be, doubtless, a stage in the progress of 

 science in which new views, thrown out at random, and the advocacy 

 of individual opinion with somewhat more than philosophical perti- 

 nacity, may be effective in the development of truth ; but there is 

 assuredly also another and more advanced stage of science, in which 

 such habits of mind can only retard and embarrass its progress, and 

 impede our arrival at those ultimate truths which it may be our ob- 

 ject to establish. At this latter stage I believe the science of geology 

 to have arrived ; and if by these remarks I should induce one specu- 

 lative geologist to watch with increased rigour the reasoning by which 

 he arrives at his convictions, I shall perhaps have done more for our 

 science than I can do by any detailed information which an occasion 

 of this nature may enable me to bring before you. 



I shall now direct your attention to some of the leading characters 

 of the great mass of drift which extends over so large a portion of 

 northern Europe. And first I shall speak of the strice which so 

 abound in the northern part of the region in question. When re- 

 garded with reference to a limited area, their directions might be 

 described as characterized by the law of parallelism ; but when re- 

 garded with reference to the whole region, we find them really cha- 

 racterized by the law of divergency. To those observers who had 

 not examined the striae on the shores of the North Sea, some point 

 lying to the north of those shores, and nearly in the direction of 

 Spitzbergen, seemed best to represent the centre of this divergence ; 

 but subsequently M. Bohtlingk observed striae descending from Kemi 

 eastward to Onega Bay, on the shores of which it is situated, and on 

 the northern coast of Lapland, he also observed them descending from 

 the high lands northward to the sea. These observations have also 

 been corroborated by other observers. Around the district com- 

 prising the mountains of Scandinavia striae appear to exist, directed 

 to almost every point of the compass, and the characters of their di- 

 vergency generally for the whole region may be considered as esta- 

 blished. 



The directions in which the detrital matter has moved in its trans- 

 port across a particular locality cannot, of course, be ascertained with 

 entirely the same accuracy as those of the striae ; but the erratic blocks 

 can in numberless instances be identified with the rocks of a parti- 

 cular locality, and thus the mean direction in which a particular block 

 has travelled can be determined with great accuracy. All the blocks, 

 however, originating in the same locality have not been transported in 

 the same direction. M. Durocher has noticed especially a granular 

 granite, easy to be recognized, of which the original site is in the de- 

 partment of Vibourg in Finland. The extreme directions in which 

 the blocks have proceeded from this spot comprise an angle nearly 

 equal to two right angles. The mean direction, however, of these 

 blocks, and that along which, or nearly so, the greatest number have 



