KENDALL : PRESIDENTL\L ADDRESS. 
173 
The Geological Survey made some effort in the same direc- 
tion by the publication of its admirable and beautifully illustrated 
Decades. This work was, unhappily, discontinued, but not before 
the genius of Edward Forbes and of Huxley had produced mono* 
graphs on groups of fossils of great interest. 
Dr. Peach's recent memoir on the Higher Crustacea of the 
Carboniferous Rocks is a welcome assurance that the palseonto- 
logical knowledge of the members of the Survey is not to be 
allowed to be lost. 
Within less than a year of the accession of the Marquis of 
Ripon, two momentous papers appeared, inequal in magnitude, 
but one destined to effect a revolution in a great field of Geological 
enquiry, the other to profoundly affect almost every field of thought 
and enquiry, and Geolog}' not less than others. 
The first of these, published less than a month before the 
Marquis of Ripon's assumption of office, was Sorby's epoch-making 
paper, presented to the Geological Society, on the microscopic 
structures of cr\'Stals and their application to the determination 
of the origin of minerals and rocks. Sorby had already demonstra- 
ted the value of thin sections in the study of rock structures in 
aqueous rocks, but in this famous memoir the whole modern 
study of Petrology may be said to have had its birth. 
The second paper in order of time was Darwin's outline of 
his theory of Evolution in the organic world, presented to the 
Limiean Society in July, 1858, and followed in the autumn of the 
same year by the publication of the " Origin of Species." It is 
of interest to geologists to recall that Dar\^in had, up to that 
time, been regarded as primarily a geologist, and John Phillips, 
in presenting to him the Wollaston Medal, conferred by the 
Geological Society in February, 1859, referred especially to his 
researches upon Glacial Geology and Coral Reefs, and, finally, 
to his Monograph on the Cirripedia as the rarest acquirements 
of a naturalist with the qualifications of a first-class geologist." 
The " Origin of Species " aroused instant interest as may be 
judged by the fact that the first issue of 1,250 copies was sold 
out in a single day, and the feelings aroused, whether hostile or 
friendh', had the effect of giving an incalculable impulse to the 
study of all branches of Natural Science. 
