A GEOLOGICAL CENTENARY.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 12963, 16 November 1907, Page 7

A GEOLOGICAL CENTENARY.

(From tub '^prrTATon.' , ) TV «loir development of that order- „, winch we cell science i \u anr of the most interesting I°ttr<in the hWorr of h«n»n evor P One Motion of thi* chapter w°bMn illustrated th» week, when i nHon ln« !,f, ° n tho c<ln - foundation of tho GeoSnl MPioty. The international Sraotor which ™ W™ *» th '« (fair by the presence of delegate* !-ith addresses of congratulation from i-arncd societies in «H !*»*« of *"* UrW ,rs w ' tncs,s to its ,m P° rtanoe - There is, perhnps. no other case in which tho rise of « groat science- may b, «o <iir«*tly traced to tho labour* of single bod? of men. It is to the Geological Society of London, as Professor Gregory pointed out in Ins ad,lrtfh to the British Association at Leicester, that is duo "the conversion of ecology from ,l hnciful «P« :ulation t0 an ordered science." Sir Archibald (Jeikie. who is not only tho President af the Geological Society, but tho most famous of living British geologists, delimed en address at the centenary meeting on Thursday, in which he iketched the position of geology a hundred years ago with ell his wellknown grace of language end lucidity of exposition. Wo ire all keenly interested in geology, tho science- of the plnnct on which wo live., with ite wonderful story of tho immense ago and picturesque development of tho earth and its inhabitants, and the narrative of its establishment is well worthy of a hearing. Iα '» sense! geology is one of the oldest of sciences. Man could hardly live on the earth at all without asking himself, as soon as ho began to think about hie environment, how it bod acquired its present shape and condition. The interpretation of Nature, as wo know from the ancient • cosmogonies and creetion-myths which 'Hare been handed down to us by tho .--.earliest civilisations, was one of the firat subjects on which the budding mind of man loved to exercise itself. .. The elemental forces of the world, with their effects in the distribution of land end see, as Sir Archibald Geikie has ' well *>id, cannot havo failed to excite ' the imagination and stimulate the curiosity of primitive man. "Wind and lightning, rain storms and river . floods, breakers end tidal-waves, earth- , qinkee and volcanoes, would seem to be ' direct and visible manifestations of powerful but uneeen supernatural beings. Nor would the moro obtrusive ' feature* of landscape fail to add their influence—mountains with their clouds, ■ tempests, and landslips; crags end precipice* with thoir strange, grotesque, half-human shapes; ravines with thei gloomy cliffs and yawning chasms between." The classical poete and philosophers hive preserved for tis the ■peculations by which men in the dawn ' of science endeavoured to explain the . features of the earth. In some respects '• they succeeded in hitting upon great : truths. Pythagoras, as reported in . the vert* of Ovid, sets forth the doc- '• trine which, our great modern poet borrowed from the geologists of the ► nineteenth century:— . "There rolls the deep where grew the tree. ' 0 earth, what changes hast thou seen I ;. There where the long street roare, hath been , The stillness of tho central sea." But, as a' rule, ancient geology was merely fanciful. The aid of a- god VMhwoked to explain all that seemed above the comprehension of man—<ie • Poseidon was credited with opening the defile of Tempe m order to drain the waters of the inland lako which once covered the Thessalian plain—end «> loßg as this was the oaeo science wee bound to stand stilJ. The philosophers of the Middle Ages carried geology no farther than the Greeks. Jn some respects they even aiepleyed a retrograde tendency. The great controversy about the existence of fossils supplies a ca«e in point. The Urepks hid recognised freely enough that rocks which contained the relics <■' « wwihe organisms must have been , JaW down by the see, and that this im- • Pi»a a very different distribution of «n« end ocean as having existed at wme rery remote period. But the medieval desire to fit science into tho •' ««wpted Mosaic chronology forbade ' tie acceptance of the great age which , tnost be ascribed to the earth on this ' Jneory. So the most absurd explana- • tions of. the fossils were put forward in ell sincority. It was held that they , 'ere mere mineral concretions, Insus jwturae, which simulated tho orgonic terms of living creatures, much as the Piltwne made by frost on the window- ' !*"• simulate plant-forms. Even within the nineteenth century c learnea divine of the University of Oxford openly avowed his belief that the .if i 'i\. tJie rocks had Purposely ' ST b >' t,,e D<?vil 'n order to mislead and perplex human enquirers. ' !L Wa if not , ""Wthe eighteenth eenV"7 brought ite groat contribution of '?* cna , u, ry to help in the unbinding of the chains which had long fettered in» human intellect that geology begun • Jo develop along the true linee. Even • Jr I, '.** *» on* of the last sciences to free itself from the hindrances of o 'EE n metaphysical: β-eatment. The - JET? 5' ,a * w " ich contributed to the? 413? ™*? 41 3? of tho Geological Society _ a ? aisgiiet raised in the minds of ' L . Bt,Klw >ts by the endless con™rj?" .« to the censes of earth- •' Jμ* i nf l ln w h i<,n the inner conscious- ' «v?*° th<> wr,t «>r was taken as a euffi"«nt measure of facts, and geolog> ««. become elmc*t as sectarian and a«. mi. i n * ihf ™ ] °&r itself. At the ■ i"H °\ t™ , eighteenth century tie geo2P* ,, *? rW was limost wholly given «P to a heated contewt over tho rival J?!?"** of the Plutoniste and the NepIα ' who respectively regarded fire Jk wat , er «s the true "elements ,, —in tne mediaeval sense—from which tie W. I,, 1 takein its in X- A consi- •. «J»Wt library might be tilled with the POtemic tracts xnd solid vol'jmes which i T a »«n waned from the studies of the Mherent« of either theory, whereas ' I* conipm P°r«ry contributions to tho ; ?" ,,a| study of geological facre might «* contained in a very modest book- ' vi- L is tlic eternal glory of a few :. englishmen—Greenotish, Phillips, »nd "r Humphry Davy omong them—that /Jw-Vfiuw tin- imij-ostiibility of thus nt- . ratting «ny vuluublt. results. In tho • T? r",' l! " a - v i(> clMir-ictvrUtic of tho r"slifiJi iniiid, tlu.y doterniined to club : rogethor in ordtr to try to bring geo- ;- »Xv Mi i)ii. s roiiiitr.v l.aek to , tho truo f p»th. iiHii,at,Hl hi" the fine |in*sa<;«> ;; liacon which they took us their "lotto, oiici which invite<l the co-opera-

*ion of ill students of the earth who spired 'not m much to cling to ami «so past discoveries, but to penetrate to what was beyond'them— not to conquer .Nature by talk, but by toil—in snort, not to have elegant end pie" 6 '" We theories, but to ciin sure and demonfctrnbld knowledge." At firet they ■"ere content to diiie torrpther onco a month, and report progress ilong theso ILneiS; but soon the new idee becam* , co fruitful thnt the fGeological Society was formally constituted, end began that fldniimble wliich for a century has dominated the history of geological study throunhoiit tho world. It must, be not supposed that the ! rioologyai Society claims To have inaugurated tho study of geology on i truly scientific basis; "it merely attempted with success to ror;ill men's minds from the bewildering controversies which hod boon substituted liy Wertior and his contemporaries for the study of Nature. Already in 1307 the foun<!'>tions of modern geology hod been laid It k to the genius of' Junes Hutton. of Kdinburgh, that we oue the Hist clear statement of the fundamental doctrine on which oil later study of tho earth has reposed. The neighbourhood of E<l in burgh presents re lnsirkablo opportunities for the practicil geologist, and in the course of his walks by Arthur's Seat and the Water of Leith Hutton was led to the epochmaking—though so simple—discovery that the agents of geological change in tho past wore still it work in moulding the earth's surface. Before him it had been taken for granted that the gloat changes in our plenct, wlijoh were apparent to -ill who did not wilfully bliut their eyes to the evidence for them, had been caused by violent agencies and great secular catastrophes which were never likely to recur, and at whoee niture we could only gue&e. Poseidon and Hercules were no longer invoked, but comets and deluges end wonderful changes in tb*> direction of tho earth's axis of revolution replaced them. Hutton was the first to point out that when a Scottish, strexm could be eeen any day carrying down debris to the see and deepening its channel In' a few inches, it was not necessary to imagino some vast earthquake which had eplit the lind into the gigantic ravines and canons of great rivers. In the. same way, ho showed that tho existing agents of geological change were amply adequate to account for the grextest alterations in the surface of tho earth, if they were allowed sufficient time to operate. This doctrine, afterw*rds expanded by Sir Charles Lyell— another Scotsman—into the theory of Unifcrmitarienism, wee the true beginning of modern physical geology, which could make no progress until it wae accepted. That it was universally accepted is mainly due to tho labours end ideals of tlie Geological Society, which, es Professor Gregory puts it, laid the broad foundation of modern geological study by ite resolute rejection of the temptation to wander in dreamland, iiid its steady insistence on the immediate study of Nature es the sole means of advancing science.