Ixxiv PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [May IQO3, 



gation with extraordinary rapidity, until at the present day there is 

 hardly a civilized nation that does not possess a Government Geolo- 

 gical Survey. The fascinating problems presented by these formations 

 and the light which their solution has thrown upon all that concerns 

 the past development of the earth and of its living inhabitants, have 

 not only attracted hosts of enthusiastic students to the science itself, 

 but have given it a far-reaching interest to countless workers in other 

 branches of knowledge and opinion. As a consequence, there is 

 hardly a single important intellectual centre in the Old World or 

 the New which has not its own Geological Society, emulative of our 

 own, whose members are either engaged in aiding the advance of 

 that science or profiting by the benefits of that advance. One and 

 all — national surveyors, members of Geological Societies, sympa- 

 thizers in other sciences, collective bodies or isolated individuals — 

 are united in a catholic freemasonry by their common study of, and 

 interest in, the rocky structure of the earth. 



I will not attempt the impossible by endeavouring to follow in 

 detail the various stages in the development of geological science, 

 or by trying to distinguish between what is due to the researches 

 of its own students, and what is due to the aids afforded them 

 by the fellow-sciences. But none among us would venture to 

 deny the assertion that no branch of scientific inquiry has profited 

 more than Geology from what has been termed the ' consensus of 

 the sciences.' No science has received more ungrudging assistance 

 from other sciences, or has repaid more fully that assistance in 

 kind. Almost every problem attacked by Geology has needed the 

 aid of some other branch of knowledge for its solution ; almost 

 every advance made by Geology has furthered the progress of one or 

 more of its fellow-sciences. 



Geology and Mineralogy. — The discovery of the geological 

 formations themselves may be said to have been essentially the 

 outcome of the early association of Geology and Mineralogy. The 

 brilliant ideas of "Werner, embodied in his so-called ( Geognosy,' in 

 which these formations were first identified by their mineral cha- 

 racters, and then followed over their vast geographical extension 

 until they were shown to stand related to the whole of terrestrial 

 nature and of life, had unquestionably their root in Mineralogy ; and 

 the geological student of the igneous formations is incapable of his 

 task unless he is well acquainted with the latest methods and results 

 of mineralogical science. But the idea of the inevitable association 



