﻿Vol. 64.] ANNIVEESARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. XOi 



Brifcain, however, was once much colder than it is now, was proved 

 on palasontological evidence by James Smith, of Jordanhill, who 

 ascertained that some of the species of shells found in the raised 

 sea-bottoms of the Clyde Basin no longer live in the adjacent seas, 

 but are northern forms, still flourishing in boreal and arctic waters. 

 The importance of this discovery, which was communicated to the 

 Geological Society in April 1839,^ was not immediately appreciated. 

 The significance of the presence of northern shells in some of 

 our younger deposits only began to be recognized after the papers 

 and debates which marked the opening of the Geological Society's 

 session in iS'ovember 1840. Stimulated by the Alpine glacier- work 

 of Venetz and Charpentier, which had been so admirably followed 

 up and extended by Agassiz, Buckland had gone to Switzerland, 

 and under the guidance of the great Swiss palaeontologist, had been 

 convinced, by the cogency of the evidence brought before him, that 

 the Alpine glaciers had once stretched for many miles beyond their 

 present terminations, had polished and striated the rocks over 

 which they moved, and had transported huge blocks of stone across 

 the great x^lain of Switzerland from the sides of the Central Alps 

 to the slopes of the Jura. As the Swiss phenomena appeared to 

 him to have the closest resemblance to th'ose with which he was 

 familiar in this country,^ he induced Agassiz to come to England 

 in the summer of 1840 and make a prolonged excursion with him 

 in the northern counties, over a large portion of Scotland, and 

 through parts of Ireland. The results of this tour were com- 

 municated to the Society at two successive meetings in the following 

 month of November.^ The two travellers then boldly announced 

 their belief that not only had glaciers filled the valleys of our 

 mountain-groups, but that they had spread far over the plains, 

 bearing with them, and leaving behind as they melted, the boulders 

 still found strewn in abundance over so large an area of this country. 



^ Proc. vol. iii, p. 118. 



^ He had examined them in Scotland in 1811 and again in 1824, and had 

 adopted the usual belief that they marked the passage of diluvial waves across 

 the country. He, for a time, looked upon them as proofs of the action of 

 Noah's Flood. 



^ Proc. vol. iii (1841): L. Agassiz 'On Glaciers & the Evidence of their 

 having once Existed in Scotland, Ireland, & England ' p. 327 ; W. Buckland, 

 ' On the Evidence of Glaciers in Scotland & the North of England ' pp. 332, 

 345, 579. An abstract of the debates which followed the reading of these 

 papers will be found in ' The History of the Geological Society of London,' by 

 H. B. Woodward (1907) pp. 138, 143. 



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