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Delivered December 1st, 1917, by 

 Sir JETHRO J. H. TEALL, M.A., D.Sc., LL.D., F.R.S. 



The inaugural meeting of the Session, 1917-18, was held 

 at Holy Trinity Hall. The new President was warmly welcomed 

 by the members present and, after suitably asknowiedging the 

 cordial reception with which he had been greeted, he proceeded 

 with the address, a report of which follows : — 



Modern Egypt forms part of the great desert plateau of 

 North Africa. It is approximately 100,000 square miles in extent, 

 but only about 12,000 miles are permanently habitable, the rest 

 being- either pure desert or semi-desert, only capable of supporting- 

 a small nomadic population. 



Herodotus, who visited the country about 2,400 years ago, 

 correctly described Egypt proper, or the permanently habitable 

 portion, as " the gift of the Nile." The delta has been won, from 

 the Mediterranean by the deposits brought down by the river, and 

 the same deposits extend up the valley. If they were removed 

 the sea would cover the whole of the delta and extend for a con- 

 siderable distance up the valley as it has done in comparatively 

 recent geological limes. 



The oldest rocks of Egypt are exposed at the cataracts, in the 

 Red Sea Hills and in the southern part of the Sinai Peninsula. 

 They constitute the " old floor " on which the later sediments have 

 foeen deposited- It was mainly of these later sediments and of 

 the physical features of those portions of the country in which 

 their relics are now found that he proposed to speak. They 

 belonged for the most part to the Cretaceous 1 and Tertiary periods. 



A Continent composed of granite, diorite, schists and other 

 ancient rocks had existed in this part of the world in Lower Cre- 

 taceous times, while sea lay to the north. The Upper Cretaceous 

 period — to which our gault, upper greensand, and chalk belong — 

 was ushered in by an advance of the sea from the north. The 

 first deposits formed upon the old land surface were of a littoral 

 character, consisting chiefly of sand. The process was continued 

 throughout Cretaceous times, and the successive belts of sedi- 

 ment succeeded each other, as it were, in a series of waves. Clay 

 followed the sand, then marls, and finally limestones of organic 

 origin, unlil a pile of nearly horizontal strata had accumulated in 

 which the vertical succession, or the succession in time, corres 

 ponded, so far as l : thological characters are concerned, to the 

 horizontal succession, or the succession in space, of the sediments 

 which surrounded the old Continent. During this long period 



