ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS 99 



his antique ideas and beliefs ? How do we, so far as 

 we are Naturalists, approach antiquity ? With what 

 degree of reverence, or with what degree of desecrating 

 analysis ? Though Froude as a historian of human 

 affairs may have resented the ruthless hand of science 

 tearing away the veil from outer space, yet if the 

 veil is torn awaj'^ from past time, should not the 

 Antiquarian hail the new vista of antiquity opened to 

 him ? Again the question — what constitutes antiquity ? 

 The word calls up such matters as tilled the soul, 

 say, of Scott's " Antiquary " ; or, again, the things of 

 early Rome and Greece, or of Egypt, or of Minos, 

 King of Crete. When Charles Kingsley, the frjend of 

 Froude, tells the old Grecian stories for English readers, 

 he throws a wonderful air of antiquity about them, 

 and se6ms to be touching on the most remote verge 

 of time. Such names, in his story, as Troy, the Euxine, 

 the Thracian Chersonese, Cephissus and Pindus and 

 the Copaic Lake, and " the dreary Scythian plains," 

 coupled with others such as Orpheus, the Gorgon, or 

 Medea, carry one back to the remotest antiquity. But 

 the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society will dub 

 these regions " quite modern," " post-tertiary," " recent." 

 Is the Geologist, therefore, a barbarian ? I hope not. 

 Undoubtedly it is a severe tax on the mental powers of 

 most people to grasp long periods of time — that is geo- 

 logically speaking "long." This was brought home to 

 me, as perhaps to some of my fellow-members, on read- 

 ing or hearing Mr J. G. Goodchild's deeply interesting 

 account of the rocks of the Siccar Point, which were 

 visited by the Club two years ago. I wish he were 

 here to-day. But he will, I am sure, let me quote him. 

 After giving the total chronological value of the uncon- 

 formity at the Siccar Point to be in years 178 million, 

 he adds that this is only one of the many great uncon- 

 formities of which the Geologist is cognisant; and "if,_ 

 therefore," he says, "I state that the Upper Old Red 



