38 PEOCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETT. 



THE AjN-^IVEESAHY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. 

 Peof. T. G. Bom^et, D.Sc, LL.D., E.E.S. 



Gentlemei^, 



During the past year our losses by death, I deeply regret to 

 say, have been hardly less numerous and no less severe than they 

 had been when last I had the honour of addressing you. 



On April 15th another link which connected the present with 

 the " heroic age " of Geology, was broken by the death of the 

 Eakl of Selkiee:, who expired after a short illness, at the family 

 seat of St. Mary's Isle, Kirkcudbrightshire, in the seventh-sixth year 

 of his age. His father, the seventh Earl, will be long remembered 

 in Canada as the founder of settlements of Highlanders in Prince 

 Edward's Island and in that district of the present province of 

 Manitoba which still bears his name. The troubles which, in its 

 early days, beset the latter colony, — troubles, which might almost 

 be called persecutions, had not their motive been zeal for mammon — 

 required the founder's presence in Canada, and he sailed thither in 

 1815, taking with him his family, including the late Earl, Dunbar 

 James Douglas, then a child six years old. The boy returned to 

 England in 1819, and after the death of his father in the following 

 year, went to Eton and in due course to Christ Church, Oxford, 

 where he had a distinguished career, obtaining a first class in 

 mathematics. Henceforward a large part of the Earl of Selkirk's 

 time was devoted to those duties which fall naturally to the share of 

 one born to a considerable estate and hereditary honours, and his 

 conscientious discharge of them won for him the respect and love 

 of all classes in Kirkcudbrightshire. He took a deep interest in 

 the affairs of the Church of Scotland, and, in addition to his private 

 duties, filled the responsible positions of Lieutenant of the Stewartry, 

 of a representative peer of Scotland, and of Keeper of the Great 

 Seal of that ancient kingdom. But his life, even if it may be 

 called uneventful, was far from monotonous. He travelled much in 

 days when locomotion was less easy than at present. There were 

 few countries in Europe of which he had not some personal know- 

 ledge. He had visited Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, had stood in the 

 trenches at Sebastopol, and in his yacht had cruised about the 

 Mediterranean ; while still a young man, he crossed the Atlantic 

 a second time for an extended tour in Canada and the United 

 States, and in 1871 he went to India. A keen observer and lover 

 of science, these travels were to Lord Selkirk no desultory wander- 

 ings, but he returned from them with augmented knowledge stored 

 up in a remarkably retentive memory. This, added to his natural 

 ability and wide experience, would have enabled him to attain a 

 high place, had he desired it, among students of science ; but though 



