ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. XXXI 



to comprehend, and largely to justify, the course taken by the French 

 geologists. Columbus discovered the new world ; and great is his 

 fame for that achievement, history, like some other great powers, 

 always paying upon results : but those who will look carefully into 

 the matter will find that most of his reasons for beheving in the ex- 

 istence of the new land which he discovered were either insufficient or 

 erroneous, and might well fail to carry conviction to the minds of 

 the much-abused kings and ministers who so long withheld their 

 help to his great enterprise. 



And I venture to doubt whether, if any cautious person were now 

 to read the ' Antiquites Celtiques,' he would rise from its perusal 

 with the feeling that the author's case had been even approximately 

 made out — whether, perhaps, he would not rather be prejudiced 

 against it. Eminently generous, truthful, hearty, and enthusiastic, 

 Boucher de Perthes paid for these virtues by a certain facility of belief, 

 which is as terrible a drawback to scientific weight as it is advan- 

 tageous in the struggle against neglect and adverse criticism when a 

 man happens to have laid hold of a truth. 



I say this much in justification of own confreres across the channel, 

 and in vindication of caution and scientific logic, with which I, for 

 one, prefer to err, rather than to be right in the company of haste and 

 guesswork. Posterity, a somewhat short-sighted personage, who, as 

 I have said, pays only upon results, will take no note of the protest, 

 and will not only award to our Columbus all the credit which he de- 

 serves for being substantially in the right, but will probably abuse 

 those of his contemporaries who were equally in the right for dis- 

 believing him. 



The death of M. A. Morlot, which took place at Berne, in Fe- 

 bruary last, was announced at the last Anniversary. I borro^w the 

 substance of the following notice of his life from the " Materiaux " 

 of M. G. de Mortillet. 



M. Morlot commenced his career as a geologist, and greatly occu- 

 pied himself with geology, in Austria. In Switzerland, where he 

 subsequently took up his abode, he very successfully combined 

 archaeology with geology, and when he died was Conservator of the 

 Archaeological Museum of Berne. Although a Professor of Geology 

 in Lausanne, he devoted himself to prehistoric studies, and greatly 

 contributed to their progress by his investigations, his writings, and 

 the public lectures which he was continually giving in one place or 

 another. 



The chief palaeo-ethnological work of M. Morlot is entitled * Etudes 

 Geologico-Ajccheologiques en Danemark et en Suisse,' which was 

 published at Lausanne in March 1860 in the ' Bulletin de la Societe 

 Yaudoise des Sciences Naturelles.' It is an excellent resume, which 

 has been of great use in spreading far and wide a knowledge of the 

 important discoveries made in Denmark and Switzerland. 



The discovery upon which M. Morlot laid most weight, is that of 

 the " Cone de la Tiniere," which he converted into a chronometer for 

 measuring the duration of the different prehistoric epochs. M. Morlot's 

 last production is a great work upon Mecklembourg. 



