538 Chronicles of Science. [Oct., 



1831 to the establishment of the British Association, of which he 

 became the Assistant General Secretary in 1832, and continued to 

 act in that capacity until 1863. In 1834 he became Professor of 

 King's College and a Fellow of the Koyal Society. In 1 840 he re- 

 signed York Museum, and entered upon the duties of the Geological 

 Survey of England and Wales, to which he contributed Memoirs 

 onithe Palaeozoic Fossils of Cornwall, Devon, and Somerset, and 

 afterwards on the Malvern Hills, &c. In 1844 he became Professor 

 of Geology in the University of Dublin. In 1849 he was appointed 

 one of Her Majesty's Commissioners to inquire into and report upon 

 the system of ventilation employed in mines. In 1853 he com- 

 menced the duties of the Chair of Geology at Oxford, which he has 

 continued to hold ever since the death of Dr. Buckland. In 1859 

 he was elected President of the Geological Society of London ; in 

 1865, President of the British Association. His various geological 

 works are above seventy in number, and his astronomical and other 

 papers are also very numerous. Besides the York Museum which 

 enjoyed the advantages of Professor Phillips's attention, the present 

 Oxford Museum may be said to have been created by him, and is 

 a model for any city in the world to copy. 



Lecture on Volcanoes. — Mr. David Forbes, F.E.S., recently* 

 delivered an interesting lecture at St. George's Hall on Volcanoes. 

 Speaking of the relative energy displayed by volcanic forces in the 

 older geological periods, Mr. Forbes said, " We must bear in mind 

 that we still have volcanoes whose craters, several miles in diameter, 

 send forth at times streams of molten stone forty miles and more in 

 length, or showers of ashes which bury the surface of the ground 

 to a depth of 400 feet below them, and, furthermore, see volcanic 

 mountains and islands literally rising up before our eyes to an 

 elevation of even thousands of feet, in what, geologically speaking, 

 is but a second of time, it does not to me seem at all necessary to 

 assume that such internal or cataclysmic forces were so much more 

 energetic in any other period than at present." 



The author believes that sufficient importance has not been 

 given to the effects produced by the cataclysmic action of volcanoes. 

 He points out that all the chief features of the earth's surface are 

 due to the elevatory forces within, and that volcanoes not only form 

 the most lofty mountains in the world, but that the backbone of 

 most of the others is composed of eruptive rocks. It must therefore 

 be admitted that the changes effected in the physical geography of 

 the world have resulted from a combination of two great but most 

 opposite agencies, the internal and external, igneous and aqueous, 

 cataclysmic and uniformitarian ; and that all the phenomena of 

 nature result from a combination of one or more forces, the same 

 phenomena, at times, being the result of totally different agencies. 



* June 19, 1870. 



