46 PEOCEEDIj!fGS OP THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



Scandinavia were more than once visited. In 1864 he v^ent to 

 America, describing the journey in ' A Short American Tramp,' 

 published in 1865. In 1873-74 he travelled through the north of 

 Europe to Archangel, thence through Eussia to the Caucasus, and 

 home by Constantinople and Southern Europe. In 1874-75 he 

 made the journey round the world described in ' My Circular jSTotes ;' 

 and at later periods spent some time in India, Syria, Palestine, and 

 Egypt. He contributed to our Journal papers on glacial subjects, 

 and wrote also on the Parallel Eoads of Lochaber and on the Gold 

 Diggings of Sutherland. In addition to this he was an authority 

 on Scottish Eolk Lore. By geologists, however, he will always be 

 best remembered in connexion with his book entitled ' Erost and 

 Eire,' published in 1865, a work which bears evidence of his skill as 

 an artist and accuracy as an observer, is full of quiet and quaint 

 humour, is delightfully written, and, even when not convincing, is 

 none the less suggestive. His loss will be deeply felt, for he bore 

 equally well adverse and prosperous fortune, and " where he was 

 best known, there he was also best loved." 



The papers which have been presented during the last session have 

 not, I think, been inferior in number or in interest to those of the 

 preceding one. As in that, papers more or less stratigraphical have 

 preponderated, and no lack of interest appears in those questions 

 where the petrologist goes hand in hand with the field-worker ; 

 thus rocks igneous and rocks Archaean have received a large share of 

 attention. Dr. Callaway read an elaborate paper bearing upon the 

 relations of the older rocks of Anglesey. His assignment of certain 

 fossiliferous strata to the Ordovician, rather than to the Cambrian, did 

 not seem to command the suffrages of other workers in the same field ; 

 but it will be diflScult, I think, to gainsay the evidence in favour of 

 the Archaean age of the crystalline schists and so-called granites, 

 which he brought forward in corroboration of that laid before you 

 last year. Mr. Hill broke ground in a field comparatively new, 

 whose rocks have long called for investigation by the more accurate 

 modern methods, in his paper on the rocks of Guernsey. 



My predecessor suggested, in his address last year, that there would 

 be better chance of controversialists coming to an agreement on the 

 difficult questions involved in the geology of the Archaean rocks, 

 could they meet for discussion upon the ground. Provided that due 

 precautions could be taken for preventing the melancholy consum- 

 mation which was fatal to a well-known scientific society, there 

 would be much, I think, in favour of this " trial by a mixed commis- 

 sion." But pending any such gathering of the clans on the Pebidian 

 moorland. Dr. Hicks laid before the Society his rejoinder to the 

 criticisms made in the previous session by the Director-General. As 

 the forces of Jermyn Street had been concentrated on him, he not 

 unnaturally sought the alliance of others, and Mr. T. Davies's 

 petrological appendix to Dr. Hicks's paper forms a valuable contri- 

 bution to the history of these interesting Pembrokeshire rocks. Some 



