72 peesident's ADDBESS. 



For some time previously the weather had been very wet and 

 unsettled, and consequently on the early morning of the 12th 

 only three members met at the Central Station. Though few 

 they determined to proceed northward, and were rewarded as 

 they travelled onward by meeting with every encouragement to 

 expect a bright summer's day, and in this hope they were not 

 disappointed, for, after crossing the Border Stream, all was sun- 

 shine. 



At Dunbar they changed trains, and here the small party was 

 unexpectedly doubled by the accession of two ladies and two 

 gentlemen ; this and the splendid weather raised the hopes and 

 spirits of the IN'aturalists. Another change and short detention 

 at Drem, and then the party having shot through several cut- 

 tings of the igneous rocks of the locality found themselves stroll- 

 ing through and admiring the beautifully-situated town of IN^orth 

 Berwick. 



Early travelling had whetted the appetites of all, and we greatly 

 enjoyed the comfortable breakfast which we found ready here 

 on our arrival. Refreshed by the meal, we at once proceeded 

 toward the coast, and, after obtaining on our way a good view 

 of Tantallon Castle, and 



" North Berwick Law, with cone of green, 

 And Bass amid the water," 



soon reached the shore and Canty Bay, about two miles distant 

 to the south. 



The geological features of this coast are most interesting. The 

 huge cone of North Berwick Law rises to a height of about four 

 hundred feet, and the Bass to more than three hundred. These 

 rock-masses are formed, as the late Hugh Miller has curtly ex- 

 pressed it, out of "homogeneous trap," or perhaps felspathic 

 clinkstone, and remain lonely but approximately-true standard 

 measures of the immense amount of denudation which the valley 

 of the Forth has undergone in former geological periods. There 

 can be no doubt that the materials now forming these two huge 

 isolated rocks were once a mass of boiling-hot fluid mud, which 

 was spread over or injected among the carboniferous rocks of that 



