ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. XXXIU 



to add criticisms and comments of my own. But in order to keep 

 myself still further witMn due bounds, I shall not enter at present the 

 field of palaeontology, reserving for a future opportunity a comparison 

 of the organic creation, in ancient and modern times, and the question 

 whether the fluctuations of the living inhabitants of the globe have 

 been regulated formerly by the same laws as now. 



Among the points of geological interest relating exclusively to the 

 inanimate world, none have given rise to a greater difference of opinion 

 than the various causes suggested to account for the position of stra- 

 tified and unstratified rocks in mountain chains. They are usually 

 referred to the development of mechanical and volcanic forces of a 

 paroxysmal character ; but geologists who favour these views are by 

 no means agreed whether the causes thus capable of modifying the 

 earth's crust, were all of them in the beginning in a state of the high- 

 est intensity, and afterwards declined in energy, or whether they have 

 been exerted again and again during short intervals of violent convul- 

 sion followed by long periods of repose. On these, and questions of 

 a kindred nature, I shall proceed to offer some observations, well 

 aware that 1 shall advocate opinions v/hich I have long cherished, and 

 on which I can scarcely fail to have a strong bias, but reminding you 

 at the same time that they who defend conclusions opposed to mine 

 have equal reason to doubt their own impartiality, and to suspect that 

 they also may be influenced by old associations, and those strong pre- 

 possessions, with which nearly all the early literature of our science is 

 imbued. It may be true that no geologist worthy of the name would 

 contend at this time of day for the modern origin of our planet, or 

 maintain the doctrine that it was created contemporaneously mth man, 

 although the multitude, including many of the educated classes, may, 

 in their ignorance of the records of creation as written in the heavens 

 and the earth, still fondly cKng to such opinions. The cultivators of 

 our science may be ready to grant the most indefinite duration to 

 each successive geological epoch, yet they may still unconsciously 

 derive a love of cataclysms and catastrophes, and faith in a primaeval 

 chaos out of which the present order of things was evolved, from an 

 hereditary creed, not founded on facts, or strict inductive reasoning 

 on natural phsenomena. 



As introductory to this subject, I cannot do better than recall your 

 attention to the recently published memoir of Sir Roderick Murchi- 



