President's Address. 
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, Hant, 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, 
Eogers, 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 for 
