﻿Yol. 64.] ANJ^nVERSAEY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. CXV 



to be declined for publication.^ The practice was so far beneficial 

 in that it excluded crude speculation, and kept the attention of 

 geologists fixed on the accumulation of facts which might after- 

 wards become the basis of sound generalizations. But it is now 

 no longer rigidly followed. We receive and print communications 

 which would have been unanimously rejected a generation ago. 



One branch of enquiry in our science lies so temptingly open 

 even to beginners, and so seductively fosters speculation that our 

 founders and their successors would have stood on a still higher 

 philosophical level than we can claim for them, had they altogether 

 debarred themselves from entering upon it. I refer to the origin 

 and history of the present features of the surface of the land, or 

 what has been termed ' physiographical geology.' The vaguest and 

 most erroneous opinions were long prevalent on this subject. It 

 was never considered as a whole, nor were its several parts ever 

 worked out in detail, with the view of trying to ascertain their 

 relations to each other in the general evolution of the topography 

 of the land. In the early stages of geology such a methodized 

 treatment of the subject was obviously impossible ; and even now, 

 with all the light which the progress of investigation has introduced, 

 physiography, while it still remains one of the most attractive, 

 continues at the same time to be one of the most delusive branches 

 of our science. It will readily be believed that the publications 

 of the Society contain few speculative papers on this subject, but 

 they do include some of historic interest and importance to which 

 I may briefly allude. 



Charles Darwin, who took so wide and philosophical a survey 

 of the whole domain of geological enquiry, enriched our publications 

 with a few physiographical memoirs, which have a special interest 

 from the way in which they illustrate, on the one hand, the 

 remarkable breadth of his generalizations, and, on the other, the 

 extreme minuteness of his observations as well as the extraordinary 

 patience with which he conducted them. The first outline of his 

 memorable theory of vast movements of the ocean-floor, based on 

 a study of coral-reefs, was read to the Society on May 31st, 1837/'' 



^ My old friend and colleague A. C. Eamsay told me that his paper on the 

 glacial origin of lakes was regarded as so speculative that, but for his being 

 President of the Society at the time, it would certainly have been refused a 

 place in the Quarterly Journal. 



■^ Proc. vol. ii, p. 552. The full title of this paper is ' On certain Areas of 

 Elevation & Subsidence in the Pacific & Indian Oceans, as deduced from 

 the Study of Coral Formations.' 



