president’s address. 
15 
In this case the phenomena appear to have been defi¬ 
nitely related to the line of the mountain chain, so that 
we are probably justified in assuming that they are the con¬ 
comitants of the great process of mountain making which 
seems to be constantly going on at one place or another of 
the earth’s surface, in that almost imperceptible way which 
is so calculated to teach us patience and show us how little 
we can actually pretend to know of the processes which have 
gone to fashion the surface of the earth, however much we 
may feel ourselves justified in deducing them from the present 
state of things. The geological clock ticks centuries; we 
hear one; who will hear the next, and how are we to combine 
the experience of our predece'ssors with our own to obtain a 
notion of the course of geologic change ? 
In my address last year I mentioned the controversy 
which was then being carried on with so much vigour as 
to the proper interpretation of the record of the rocks in 
the north-west of Scotland. At that time the question 
seemed likely to furnish matter for discussion for a long 
time to come. In the issue of “ Nature ” for 13tli November 
last, however, there appeared a communication from Dr. A. 
Geikie, the Director-General of the Survey, accompanying the 
report of the field observers specially detailed by him for the 
service of examining the district over again, and, if possible, 
finally determining the matter. He confesses that their re¬ 
port so much surprised him that it was not until he had him¬ 
self been over the ground with the observers that he was able 
to accept their conclusions. As to these conclusions it is 
sufficient to say that they almost unreservedly, and in many 
cases verbally, corroborate the views which have been 
strenuously advocated by what may be called the unofficial 
geologists of late years. They even go beyond them in some 
details—for instance, they mention a case in which the 
thrust of rock has been so enormous just at the fault plane 
that there is proof of a movement of ten miles along that 
plane, a patch on the top of a mountain having been 
originally connected with other masses at that distance from 
it, although denudation has since then removed the inter¬ 
mediate portions. The ‘‘ Geological Magazine ” for March 
of this year contains a summing up of the whole affair from 
the pen of our member, Professor Lapworth, under the title of 
“The Close of the Highland Controversy.” He shows that 
in almost every individual conclusion to which the officers 
of the Survey have now found themselves driven, they are 
but endorsing an opinion of some one or other of the 
unofficial geologists who have for many past years studied 
