17 



OCTOBBR 21ST, 1890. 



The winter session commenced with the following paper by the 

 Secretary, entitled 



HOW GKEAT BRITAIN BECAME AN ISLAND. 



In addition to the general difnculty one experiences in knowing 

 how to begin a paper our subject presents another still more serious, 

 namely, knowing where to begin. We have to describe how Great 

 Britain became an island. How far back in its geographical 

 history and development shall we travel to find a starting point ? 

 For the land in which we live has literally and actually seen so 

 many " ups and downs in the world" that we scarcely know how 

 to choose. We might commence, and it would be a very good 

 starting point, with its condition in what has been styled the Great 

 Ice Age, when Great Britain was a group of innumerable islands 

 of all forms, heights, and sizes, all swathed in snow and ice. Or 

 we could commence with the Coal Age, when it was mostly a 

 collection of low-lying swampy areas with a sub -tropical climate ; 

 or farther back even to the time when, we are told, " the earth 

 was Yv^aste and empty, and darkness lay on the face of the deep." 

 Shall we explore the dark recesses of Time still further, and trace 

 in imagination what has happened since the earth was part of a 

 huge nebulous mass, out of which they say our Solar System in all 

 its beauty has been evolved ? Or with a mind still unsatisfied, 

 shall we endeavour with Dr. Croll to picture out how that nebulous 

 mass itself was produced. The world is so old. 



I remember reading in one of our leading monthly reviews a few 

 years ago an exceedingly interesting history of tlie noted Victoria 

 Cave near Settle, in Yorkshire, in which the last method but one 

 was actually followed, and the talented writer described all the 

 steps and changes since the nebulous condition of the earth to the 

 state of the cave when it was explored by our modern geologists. 

 But on the present occasion it will I think be preferable to beghi 

 somewhat nearer to our own times, at some epoch where we find 

 firmer ground upon which to build our descriptions ; and we shall 

 probably get a sufficiently clear idea, at least so far as a clear 

 idea can be got, by tracing the changes which have occurred 

 during what geologists call the Tertiary Age, the latest of 

 the three great Life periods into which the physical history 

 of the earth has been divided, — that during which (at least 

 in our country) all the deposits above the White Chalk 

 have been laid down. This White Chalk in England marks 

 the close of the great Secondary or Mesozoic Period, and gives us 



