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Rev. W. B. Galloway. — I have long been interested in the progress 
of geology, and have watched its many changes, and the theories which have 
been raised and rejected. Facts have been collected under erroneous 
theories, but even an erroneous theory has the advantage of exciting the 
interest of those who favour it, and in educing extra facts, all of which go 
eventually to the discovery of the truth. Those facts which Professor 
Hughes has so interestingly and clearly placed before us this evening, we 
must all accept. There is no difference of opinion as to the facts, but in 
regard to the cause which has influenced the deposits of these various 
substances, there may be very different conjectures. The Glacial theory was 
not the theory when I first became acquainted with geology, but the Diluvial 
theory, which was maintained by Buckland. It appears to me that the. 
Glacial theory has been put instead of that Diluvial theory, and that it has 
been put in place of it with very great disadvantage. Taking the fact of an 
universal deluge, many of those things which have been so clearly described 
may be accounted for by diluvial deposits. There arose the question how so 
great a quantity of water as to submerge all the earth existed ; but that has 
been answered by Lyell and others, who found that the average depth of 
the sea is about fifteen times the height of the land. Nothing, therefore, of 
a difficulty exists as to the quantity of water ; but as to the manner ' of 
submersion some difficulty might arise. It is admitted that there is a sunken 
continent in the Southern Ocean, and the fact of its sinking may have 
influenced the change of the earth’s axis ; and may not the description given 
by the late Polar expedition of the Palceocrystic ocean suggest some thoughts 
to us of the effects of a sudden change of axis ? Now, if a change of axis 
took place on this earth— and I think strong evidence can be brought 
forward of such a change from the shifting of the magnetic pole — an idea 
was once* started that there is a nucleus of the earth revolving differently 
from the earth itself, over which the changing body of the earth may 
slip, — and if that change of axis were sudden, inevitably the waters 
of the sea must have been thrown over the land in a very violent manner. 
Near the North Pole the fields of ice must have been thrown in a southerly 
direction — towards the south-east and south-west — drifting over the con- 
tinents, and carrying portions of rock — huge boulders — which might be 
deposited here and there. That those boulders have been deposited chiefly in 
the northern regions, that they do not extend to the tropical climates, favours 
the idea that they were carried by icebergs from the north. There is this 
evidence of the change of axis in the geological facts taught by Lyell, that 
the deposits of coral in the neighbourhood of Vienna, and in parts of the 
north of Italy, give evidence of a similar temperature having existed there and 
in Jamaica, the same kind of substances being found in both. There is now a 
great difference of latitude between these places — about thirty-one degrees ; 
and there is evidence that at one time there was no such difference. There is 
also this fact, an astronomical fact. If we take into account the idea of the 
best astronomers — I believe of all of them — that the secondary planets were 
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