5 



true or a false fact, depend entirely upon the relations in which it 

 stands to other things. 



What I have said is enough for me now to take as ground for 

 the work set to itself by the Association whose opening meeting we 

 hold this evening. Instead of any apology being needed for the 

 forming of such an Association, or of those who have taken part 

 in its formation having reason to give any other heed than a pass- 

 ing smile to the jealousies which, unworthily to themselves, some 

 men have indulged in at the boldness of this attempt, it is matter 

 of surprise that it has been so long delayed. Geology is a study 

 which cannot be followed merely iu the laboratory or the closet ; 

 nor can the growth and development with which it deals, be watched 

 among groups collected by the traveller, and brought together in 

 the garden or the menagerie. It can be learnt only in the field. 

 The very power to judge rightly of its facts, and to marshal them 

 in available order, must be got in the field. Not, of course, that 

 every man must himself have travelled over every " formation," 

 before he can understand Geology. But, in order to bring home to 

 the mind the bearings of observations made upon many large groups 

 of the facts that lie within this class, the student must have accus- 

 tomed himself to a personal knowledge of the appearances and shapes 

 under which rocks and stratifications are actually found beneath the 

 mere outer covering of the earth. Now it is, with the active mind, 

 a great increase to the mere pleasure of travel, or even of rural wan- 

 derings, to have an object of interest added to the charm which the 

 landscape gives to the eye. Hence, Geology, so soon as it became 

 known as a science, invoked at once, in every corner, the active 

 curiosity and interest of numbers of those who are accustomed to 

 walk abroad with the open eye. Each of these finds that he can 

 gather something which helps to illustrate, if not to add to, that 

 stock of facts, on the true interpretation of which, by careful com- 

 parison, the truthfulness of the science must depend. But even 

 this, though alone enough to make such an Association as the pre- 

 sent the natural and almost necessary growth of the pursuit of such 

 a science, is by no means the most important reason for its active 

 existence, nor will be the widest sphere of its usefulness. It is 

 within a very few years, comparatively speaking, that the enterprise 

 of this couutry has become so extraordinarily developed in the way 



