ANNIVERSAET ADDEESS OF THE PRESIDEN^T. 59 



radical improvements ia classification, brilliant hypotheses on the 

 evolution aud relationship of fossil organisms, secure for this last work 

 a promiuent place in biological literature, and will probably occupy 

 followers and opponents of his views for many years to come." 



It is not my intention to attempt any survey of the geological 

 discoveries in the past year, though here, also, passing reference 

 may be made to two events of importance to (leology. Perhaps 

 the most striking, until within the last week, was a discovery that 

 could, however, scarcely be credited to 1889, that of the nature of 

 the Greenland ice-sheet. Though Dr. Nansen's Journey of 1888, 

 the details of which only reached us in the past year, did not do 

 much more than confirm the observations of Nordenskiold and 

 others, still the results are of the greatest importance, and the facts 

 now clearly ascertained of the enormous dimensions of the ice- 

 sheet bear witness to the accuracy of the inferences drawn by the 

 geologists who investigated the traces of the Glacial epoch, as to 

 the depth of the ice and the erosion exerted by it. 



Only yesterday an announcement was made that coal has actually 

 been cut at Dover. Probably geologists, and especially those who 

 have followed the gradual accumulation of evidence as to the occur- 

 rence of palseozoic rocks beneath south-eastern England, were muc 

 less astonished at the discovery than the public in general. A 

 letter that I received yesterday from Prof. Boyd Dawkins, by whose 

 advice, I believe, the boring was carried out, confirms the infor- 

 mation published in the newspapers, that a seam of coal has been 

 reached at a depth of 1180 feet, and that this seam is proved to be 

 of Carboniferous age by the plant-fossils in the associated clays. It 

 must be a source of congratulation to geologists to reflect that the 

 discovery is solely the result of scientific induction, and arrived at 

 by following the line of research fi.rst indicated, I believe, by the 

 late Mr. Godwin- A.usten and subsequently by Prof. Prestwich. 



The question of the permanence of ocean-basins, to which the 

 remainder of this address will be chiefly devoted, is one that has 

 attained great prominence in this country since the ' Challenger ' 

 Expedition. The opinion that the deep parts of the ocean have 

 been the same from tbe earliest period of which we have any record 

 in the Earth's strata, has received the approval of several eminent 

 geologists and biologists, l^evertheless there are many who feel 

 grave doubts on tbe subject, and I think the arguments on both 

 sides are worthy of reconsideration. 



