54 



PROCEEDINGS OE THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



feel indebted to the author for the careful manner in which he 

 follows up the comparison of our British types with those described 

 by foreign petrographers. 



Mr. lEellard Reade, who is so well known to geologists by his 

 thoughtful and suggestive addresses to the Geological Society of 

 Liverpool, has found an admirable subject, which he has treated 

 with great skill and no little originality, in his ' Origin of Mountain 

 Ranges.' 



To the manner in which the advancement of geological science is 

 being promoted by the various societies in other countries, and the 

 surveys undertaken by foreign States, I can do no more than barely 

 allude. Everywhere we have to note the same steady and sustained 

 efforts, before which the clouds that have enveloped the story of 

 former times are being gradually rolled back, and the light of 

 knowledge is illuminating the obscurest problems connected with 

 the past history of our globe. 



In the advance of an armv through an unknown and difficult 

 country there must always be some risk of the communications 

 between its several divisions breaking down, and of their power for 

 effective cooperation becoming impaired ; more especially does this 

 danger arise when the army is large in its numbers, complicated in 

 its organization, or swift and sudden in its movements. 



Now that vast host of geological investigators which is ever 

 pressing forward to conquer new realms of knowledge is distin- 

 guished among all the armies of science by the rapidity of its evolu- 

 tions : the history of Geolog}' is the chronicle of a brilliant succession 

 of forced marches. It may therefore be prudent if, from time to 

 time, we pause to look around us and to inquire if there be any 

 chance of the centre of our army, while engaged in steadily grappling 

 with the vast physical problems which confront it, losing touch 

 with either of its wings — that which is composed of the cultivators 

 of the mineralogical sciences on the one hand, or that which is 

 formed by the students of the biological sciences on the other. 



Prom that position of elevation and of observation in which I 

 find myself placed by your indulgent suffrages, it has occurred to me 

 that I may possibly render a service by reporting to you the main 

 features of the field of conflict, so far as it is given to me to discern 

 them. 



