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subject. Trade creates our wealth, and contributes most to 
England's greatness as a nation, and those who best conserve 
her interests are her most sincere friends. I trust the 
meeting will bear with me for occupying so much of their 
valuable time with these crude observations on what many- 
may consider an unimportant subject ; but its importance is 
frequently and deeply felt by those who have erected large 
manufactories, and those about to do so. 
CONSIDERATIONS CONNECTED WITH THE RELATIVE CHANGE OF 
LAND AND SEA UPON THE SURFACE OF THE EARTH. BY 
CAPTAIN DRAYSON, ROYAL ARTILLERY, WOOLWICH. 
There are few subjects connected with geology the accu- 
racy of which have been so well established as that the land 
and the sea have frequently changed their relative positions. 
Upon first considering this subject, the mind is naturally 
influenced by a feeling of wonder and surprise. 
If we stand upon some elevated snow-capped peak of 
the Alps, and survey the vast accumulation of ponderous 
rocks and towering pinnacles, heaped together in masses, or 
separated by yawning chasms, and then turn our eyes to the 
calm and verdant landscape beneath us and in the distance, 
it is really difficult to realize the truth of the statement that 
these lofty mountains were not only once level with the 
plains, but at no distant epoch were actually the bed of a 
sea. Fortunately the human mind is in the majority of 
instances guided by facts which, however strange or won- 
derful to our ideas at first, will still, after a lapse of time, be 
generally accepted and placed within the museum of science. 
Thus, when shells which were undoubtedly of marine origin, 
were found embedded in the solid rocks which formed the 
most elevated mountains, it was impossible, or at least 
