﻿Vol. 64.] ANNIVEKSAKT ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. XCvii 



proclivities to make journeys in foreign lands and bring home notes 

 of their observations, and not infrequently collections of specimens. 

 In those days the number of learned societies to which such notes 

 could appropriately be presented was much more limited than it is 

 now; the periodical press was still in its infancy, and the more 

 ambitious or successful travellers were generally disposed, then as 

 now, to give their narratives to the world in the form of inde- 

 pendent works. The Transactions of the Geological Society opened 

 a new and convenient channel for the publication of scientific 

 notes of foreign travel, and the Quarterly Journal has since been 

 equally available for similar communications. The progress of time, 

 however, has effected considerable changes in the facilities for making 

 known the results of scientific journeys. The number has much 

 increased of societies publishing papers, not only in our own land but 

 among all the civilized nations of the globe. National geological 

 surveys have been established in most countries, and the geology of 

 these countries is now largely in the hands of native ofiicials, by 

 whom it is worked out in systematic detail. The little-known areas 

 of the earth's surface which offer a field for the enterprising geologist 

 who can only afford time for rapid traverses of new country are 

 growing every year fewer and smaller. It is natural, therefore, that 

 important papers on foreign geology should tend to become less 

 frequent, and that the Geological Society should more rarely receive 

 communications respecting the geology of regions which have the 

 benefit of possessing native or local observers, as well as a sufficiency 

 of scientific journals. Such communications, it is felt, are in general 

 more appropriately published in the countries to which they refer, 

 although the Society still gladly receives such papers on foreign 

 geology as have not merely a local significance, but bear in an 

 interesting or novel manner on the principles of the science. 



In the early days of the Geological Society, the face of the earth 

 presented many untrodden fields to the geologist. And even the 

 regions that had often been traversed and described had received 

 such diverse interpretations from the antagonistic schools of doctrine 

 that their true structure and geological history were in dispute. 

 These well-known tracts were apt to become battle-fields for the 

 triumph of theoretical opinions, rather than training-grounds for 

 the establishment of truth. The twelve volumes of our Trans- 

 actions, covering the years from 1807 to 1856, furnish interesting 

 evidence of the kind of journeys which the founders and early 

 members of the Society took abroad, and of the nature of the obser- 



