Vol. 65.] ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF TEE PRESIDENT. IxXxi 



At our last Anniversary the President reviewed the history of our 

 Society and recounted the achievements of our Science. He bade 

 farewell to the old century : it is for us to welcome the new. If 

 the past had its triumphs, the present has no less its problems. 

 New peaks rise before us, some close at hand and sharply defined, 

 others more remote and as yet but dimly perceived: many a stiff 

 and exhilarating climb is in prospect. 



Of the more immediate problems that relating to geological time 

 is one of the most important, and I propose to make it the centre 

 about which this rather discursive address will revolve. 



But, before entering into scientific discussion, there is one- 

 event in the recent history of the Society to which I would beg 

 your permission to allude. Since vacating the Chair last year, 

 Sir Archibald Geikie has been elected to the Presidency of the 

 Royal Society. This is the first time that a geologist has been 

 called to fill that illustrious office, and we may fairly regard the 

 honour as one which casts on us as a Society some reflected beams. 

 I feel persuaded beforehand that you will authorize me to offer 

 the congratulations of the Society to the new President, and to 

 express the hope that he may live long to exercise his sway with 

 that accustomed genial wisdom which has conduced so much to 

 our own happiness and prosperity. 



The Position of Geology among the Sciences. — It has 

 sometimes happened, on occasions like the present, that your 

 President has taken the opportunity to lay before you his views as 

 to the true aims and scope of our Science ; if, then, I now offer a few 

 brief remarks on this subject, I shall at least have the sanction 

 of good example. 



"When Geology first started on her career, it was with the desire, 

 conscious or unconscious, of discovering how the world was made. 

 Since then, as she has progressed, she has extended the limit of her 

 enquiries, and now holds all purely terrestrial phenomena as 

 subjects proper to her study. No question that can be asked 

 about the earth lies outside her province. That this was her 

 predestined position will be readily perceived if we picture to 

 ourselves the classification of the sciences, somewhat as it was con- 

 ceived by Herbert Spencer. First, and seated above all, breathing 

 the rare air of the empyrean, are Logic and Mathematics, concerned 

 solely with abstract ideas and their relationships ; next, in a lower 

 heaven, come Chemistry and Physics (using these terms in their 



