ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. 79 



quently shown at tho rate of that progress, an impatience which 

 leads to attempts to cut the tangled skeins of research by hasty and 

 ill-considered speculation. Geologists, no less than Biologists, need 

 to recollect and keep ever before their minds the important fact that 

 the geological record, although it is one of enormous value, is 

 exceedingly imperfect — and that this imperfection is quite as con- 

 spicuous in respect to physical as it is to palseontological data. How 

 sadly is this important truth lost sight of by those who, on the 

 strength of a few isolated facts and fragmentary observations, are 

 prepared to construct maps of large portions of the earth's surface 

 at far distant periods of its history ! Such maps are to the Geologist 

 what "genealogical trees" are to the Biologist — " Will-o'-the-Wisps " 

 leading us aside from the safe paths of scientific induction. 



It is, I suspect, from the obvious failure of attempts of this kind 

 — attempts which had better never have been made — that such 

 frequent attempts at revolt against the principles of Uniformitar- 

 ianism take their origin. For myself, instead of disappointment, I 

 feel a constant surprise that these doctrines have enabled us to 

 explain so much, when our knowledge of the causes now at work 

 around us is still so imperfect ; and I am continually impressed by 

 the fact that each new discovery concerning the present order of 

 nature removes old difficulties in the explanation of the past. In 

 saying that I adhere to the doctrines of XTniformitarianism, I, of 

 course, mean the XTniformitarianism which Lyell himself taught, 

 and not the absurd travesty of that doctrine sometimes ascribed 

 to him. 



The well-grounded conviction which results from observing the 

 triumph o£ a great principle, when applied in an overwhelming 

 number of cases, and which refuses to abandon that principle at the 

 first appearance of difficulty, is surely not out of place in a student 

 of nature. It was this scientific " faith " which led Scrope to 

 believe, in spite of difficulties arising from the imperfect knowledge 

 in his day of physics, chemistry, and mineralogy, that massive and 

 schistose crystalline rocks have been formed from ordinary lavas 

 and sediments, when subjected to enormous pressures and compli- 

 cated earth-movements ; which induced Lyell to seek for and find 

 the key to physical changes during past times in the operations 

 going on everywhere around us ; and which finally conducted 

 Darwin, by the application of the same principle in the case of living 

 beings, to the doctrine of organic evolution. 



But, alas ! this " faith " seems often sadly wanting among us 



