President's A ddress. 



189 



its present position and future prospects may not be without 

 some advantage. And here, at the outset, it may be re- 

 marked that the study of geology was never in a more 

 equable and well-balanced condition. No one branch seems 

 to be in the ascendant, or cultivated exclusively to the 

 detriment of others. Mineralogy and the discrimination of 

 rock-species are not now regarded as constituting the science 

 of geology ; nor is it the fashion to allow palaeontology to 

 absorb the whole of our interest and attention. Mineralogy 

 and chemical geology, palaeontology and physical geology, 

 have each their students and cultivators ; and though occa- 

 sionally some novelty like the " Origin of species" or the 

 " Antiquity of man" may temporarily arrest the attention, 

 yet on the whole the students of our many-sided science 

 seem convinced that its general progress can be best pro- 

 moted by every one labouring in that department to which 

 he has been led by his natural predilections, and for the 

 cultivation of which he has the greatest facilities. It is thus 

 that the chemistry of our science is promoted by such 

 researches as those of Bischoff, Delesse, Hunt, and Haugh- 

 ton ; its physics by those of De Beaumont, Hopkins, Thom- 

 son, Mallet, and Sorby ; its palaeontology by Agassiz, Owen, 

 Hall, Huxley, Pictet, De Koninck, Milne Edwards, Pander, 

 Davidson, and others too numerous for detail ; its strati- 

 graphical successions by Murchison, Logan, Kamsay, Jukes, 

 Kogers, Barrande, Hochstetter, Oldham, Hector, Selwyn, 

 and others entrusted with Government and colonial surveys ; 

 its systemal connections and higher generalisations advanced 

 by such writings as those of Lyell, Phillips, Darwin, Dana, 

 and Sedgwick ; while in every county and provincial dis- 

 trict a host of local observers are each contributing his mite 

 of observation and discovery to the general fund of geological 

 progress. No other branch of natural science, indeed, has 

 of recent years made such rapid and substantial progress as 

 geology ; and though many problems yet remain to be solved 

 and old errors to be exploded, still, on the whole, we may 

 well congratulate ourselves on the nearer and hopeful attain- 

 ment of something like an intelligible world-history. The 

 increase of local observers, the augmented facilities fur 



