president’s address. 
47 
Canadians induced large numbers of English men of science 
(and others') to cross tlie Atlantic, and our own society lias 
already had experience of the benefits derived from the 
innovation. In the very country where the specimens in 
dispute were first found, and which still furnishes the best 
specimens, we might have expected the controversy as to 
the organic or purely mineral character of eozoon to have 
formed a conspicuous feature of the geological discussions. 
There seems, however, to have been a truce between the 
parties, both, I suppose, feeling their own case impregnable, 
and waiting for the discovery of new facts which shall 
unmistakeably put their opponents to silence. 
The various geological problems of which I have spoken 
to-night show us, it seems to me, very clearly how necessary 
it is for us to keep our judgments very much in suspense 
even on questions which appear to us demonstrated almost to 
certainty. It seems frequently to be forgotten that after all 
many of these so-called laws are only the attempt to collect 
phenomena in some order which appears to us natural. The 
sequence of rocks in Sutherland appeared as regular and 
normal as possible, and on the strength of such observations 
Murchison and his followers were entitled to found the views 
which they held ; what they were not justified in, as it has 
turned out, was the assumption that theirs was the only 
explanation of the sequence. 
So perhaps I may say, with trembling at my presumption, 
it seems to be with what we are ordered to believe of evolution. 
That it is quite a probable explanation of certain phenomena 
is quite true, but that the supporters of it bring forward 
anything which can be called proof—I speak as one without 
the slightest special knowledge, having only that which can 
be derived from what may be called popular presentations of 
the subject—I fail to see. They say, it must be so, or, it is, 
which of course is final but not altogether satisfactory. That 
certain flowers, for instance, have developed their colours, 
&c., with special reference to the preferences of different 
classes of insects, which of course may be true, but which 
appears to me quite incapable of proof, and yet is asserted 
with the utmost certainty and appearance of infallibility. I 
should, perhaps, apologise for travelling so far out of the 
special subjects of my address, but it seems to me to arise 
somewhat naturally from the subjects treated of, and 1 simply 
ask that those who do not recognise the necessary truth of 
such speculations may enjoy that toleration which ought to 
arise from a feeling of our own proneness to error. 
