ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. O 



The leading ideas of his theory were thought of during his voyage 

 in the Beagle, in which he visited our own Colony, and they were 

 published in 1842 in his "The Structure and Distribution of 

 Coral Reefs." So beautiful is his theory, so completely did it 

 seem to explain all the phenomena, that it remained unchallenged 

 till about the year 1863, when Semper published his paper on 

 the Pelew Islands, which he made out to show elevation instead 

 of the subsidence required by Darwin's theory. But neither 

 this, nor the objections subsequently raised by others, succeeded 

 in shaking the belief of Darwin, who died in 1882, still convinced 

 that his was the true theory. In 1880, Murray, the naturalist 

 on the Challenger, published the most formidable attack, which 

 has yet been made upon the theory of Darwin, and from that 

 time till the present a keen controversy has been carried on. 

 Murray's theory is, in some measure, a revival and development 

 of the early theory of Chamisso, the poet-naturalist, who visited 

 the South Seas in 1815-1818. It is not for me here to enter into 

 the details of the argument on either side, nor indeed to express 

 any opinion on the merits of a subject which is somewhat outside 

 my own line of work, and is the subject of much discussion by 

 the masters of geology of the day. 



It appears, however, that the controversy, in the opinion of 



Darwin himself and of those who should be well qualified to 



judge, will be as good as settled if one could put a drill down to 



the bed of the coral formation of a typical atoll and bring up a 



core to be examined by competent geologists. Darwin himself it 



was who conceived the idea, for in his letter of May 5th, 1881, to 



Alexander Agassiz, in which he spoke of Murray's theory, he says — ■ 



" I wish that some doubly rich millionaire would take it into his head 

 to have borings made in some of the Pacific and Indian atolls, and bring 

 home cores for slicing from a depth of five hundred to six hundred feet." 



The purpose of my reference to these matters here is to tell 

 you, that this is about to be carried out by a Committee of the 

 British Association for the Advancement of Science, for which I 

 have the honour to be acting in Australia. 



