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This item is filmed at the reduction ratio checked below/ Ce document est film6 au taux de reduction indiqud ci-dessous. 10X 14X 18X 22X • 12X 16X 20X 26X 30X 24X 28X n 32X 1 i^> ^OVA SCOT74 PROVINCE HOUSE ro /f '■■ \ \ f *<: V HALIFAX, N, s. ^^"fiRl A?. ;* EKCOLLECTIONS OF SIR CHARLES LYELL. Being the Annual Presidential Address of the Natural History tSociety of Montreal, for 1875, delivered by PRINCIPAL Daw- BON, LL.D., F.R.S. I propose to devote the greater part of this address to memo- ries of" a man whose death may almo.t be said to close an era in the history of geological progress, as tho publication of his greatest work, the Principles of Geology, may be held to have begun an era in the study of that science, whose goal of to-day will ever be its starting point for to-morrow. Sir Charles Lyell, the greatest geological thinker of our time and nation, died on the 22nd of February, in his seventy-eighth year. He was born at Kinnordy in Forfarshire, on the 14th of November, 1797, and graduated at Oxford, in 1819. He studied for the Bar, and began the practice of his profession ; but his mind was already occupied with inquiries as to the structure of the earth, stimulated apparently by Buckland's lectures, to which he had listened at Oxford. In 1824, he became an honorary secretary of the Geological Society of London, and for a time he was Pro- fessor of Geology in King's College, London. He was elected, for the first time. President of the Geological Society in 1836. Sir Charles received the honor of knighthood in 1848, and was raised to a baronetcy in 1864. He had the degree of D.C.L. from Oxford and that of LL.D. from Cambridge, He was thrice president of the Geological Society, and onoe t>f the British Association. %f *m 2 He married in 1832 the eldest daughter of Leonard Horner, himself a <:ood geologist, and a friend and helper of Lyell in his earlier work ; and his wife not only graced his home and sedu- lously attended to all the wants and interests of a man too devoted to his specialties to give much attention to the ordinary affairs of life, but shared the fatigues of his journeys, and gave no .-tmajl help in many of his works, being herself well acquainted with tiatural history and an accomplished linguist. Her death, less than two years ago, deprived his old age of its chief earthly stay. In January, 1880, the first volume of his Principles of Gecnogy appeared, and was followed by the second in January, 1832, and by the third in the following year. This work has reached its eleventh tMlition ; and with the Elements or Manual of Geology, which I'ollowed, it nmy be said to liave done more than any other book to shape the geological science of the time. More especially the doctrine of reference to existing causes for the explanation of all geological phenomena, at once removed theoretical geology from a speculative to an inductive basis, and laid a stable foundation for a history of the earth. Though Lyell published many detached geological memoirs, and also gave to the world very instructive and interesting narratives of his travels in America, and latterly summed up the facts and conclusions at present reached with reference to the latest geological period, in his "Antiquity of Man," his great fame must rest on his Prin- ciples of Geology, and on the eflFect of this work in giving form to geological science. While the name and fame of Lyell belong to the world, we In British America and our brother geologists of the United States have some special cause to revere his memory, because of his world-wide grasp of the subjects he studied, and becau.se of his eminent services to our own local geology and geologists ; and, as examples of these, I shall take the liberty of referring to some of them which came under my own personal observation. The visits of Sir Charles Lyell to America were three in number, though detailed narratives of two only were published. The first, in 1841, was made in pursuance of his determination to verify for himself, as far aa possible, all geological facts to which he had occasion to refer — a determination justified not only by the love of truth, but by his own great powers of appre- ciating the nature and relations of phenomena, and of presenting lOg/ I d 8 them to the minds of otherH. He had, oq this occasion, un invitation to lecture for the Lowell Institute of Boston, which kept him some time in that city ; but he took time to travel very extensively both in Canada and the United States. His second visit to America was made in 1845, and on this occasion, he merely called at Halifax, and did not travel in British North America. He devoted his whole time to the United States, and more especially to the South. In 1850, he was named one of the Commissioners to the Great Exhibition in New York, and on this third visit he landed in Halifax and spent some time in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. I had the pleasure of first meetin*!; Sir Cliarles in 1841, when he spent a few weeks in the Maritime Provinces of British America. I had ju.>«t returned from the University of Ediuburf»h and from the somewhat careful training in miner.ilo<:y and litholoijy of the veteran Jameson, and had already given some time and study to the Carboniferous rocks of my native province. In these circumstances, the visit of Lyell was most opportune for me ; and from my local knowledge, I was able to give him some aid in unravelling those complexities of the Carboniferous beds, to which at the time his attention Wiis earnestly directed. I accordingly accompanied him in the remainder of his tour in Nova Scotia, and after his departure, followed up his work in districts which he had been unable to reach. We have met many times since, both in England and in this country, and have regularly corresponded down to within a very short time of his death ; and I have ever found him a warm friend, and intensely intirested in all that concerned the growth of natural science in this country. The benefits rendeied by Sir Charles to American Geology in his several visits to this continent, it would not be easy to over- estimate. At the time of his first visit, few English geologists had seen those great breadths of the older and of the more recent formations by which this continent is distinguished, or had the means of realizing for themselves the resemblances and differences of the formations on the opposite sides of the At- lantic; and American and British workers in these subjects were little known to each other. The visits of S' Charles did much to remedy all this. His own mind was ailed with those grander aspects of geological phenomena which appear in America. He brought into correspondence with each other those T i t workers in science, whom his intuitive tact perceived to be Buited to give mutual aid. In British America, in particular, his agency in this way was very valuable in bringing together the widely- separated cultivators of science, and in linking them with the scientific movement of the mother country. Nor were his visits barren of purely scientific results. He may have made few discoveries of new facts, — and he had not time to enU^r into detailed stratigraphical studies; — but in a thousand instances ho cast new light on obscure facts, and gathered into a harmonious union detached fragments of evidence, and suggested new conclusions and interpretations. Of this character were his re-arrangement of the Carboniferous rocks of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick ; and the clear conceptions which he formed of the nature and origin of our Post-pliocene formations, and which are still, I think, in advance of those cur- rently taught on this side of the Atlantic. Limited though his time for observation was, he always seized the salient and important points of any formation or locality ; and I have often been struck with the truthfulness and com- pleteness of the sketches which he gave of phenomena with refer- ence to which his opportunities of collecting information were very imperfect. In these American researches, the great gifts of the man were brought out in a light somewhat diflFerent from that in which they appear in his general works. The main distinction between Sir Charles and most of his contemporaries, was his eminence as a thinker, whether in inductive or deductive reasoning. Like most of the P]nglish geologists oi" his time, he had received less training in the characters of minerals and rocks than that which the more severe schools of science exacted, and his imperfect vision was a great hindrance in lield work, and sometimes even a source ot personal danger; but when facts, however complex, were once obtained, they grouped themselves in his mind in their natural relation.'*, with a!i unfailing certainty, while their connections with all the other parts of his vast stores of know- ledge and the general conclusions deducible from them, came out with a degree of clearness always beautiful, and often even startling. Another quality of his mind was the fresh and vivid interest, almost childlike, which every new truth awakened in him. This feeling is more or less that of every true naturalist. It depends i on the clear perception of what is presented to us, and on the keen realization of its relations to thin<:;s previously known, and perhaps still more on the sudden breakinjr of those new relations upon the mind as if with a flash of divine li<;ht. I well remem- ber how, alter we had disinterred the bones of Dendrerpeton from the interior of a large fossil tree on the Joggins shore, his thoughts ran rapidly over all the strange circumstances of the burial of the animiil, its geological age, and its possible relations to reptiles and other anim.'ils, and he enlarged enthusiiistically on these points, till suddenly observing the astonishment of a man who accompanied us, he abruptly turned to me and whispered : " The man will think us mad if I run on in this way." An allied feature of his mental chanicter was the readiness with which he accepted new conclusions .md relinquished without regret views which he might have long held, when he perceived them to be shaken or untenable. He seemed wholly free from that common failing of men of science which cau.^es them to cling with such tenacity to opinions once formed, even in the face of the strongest evidence. This quality eminently fitted him to be the expositor of a rapidly advancing science, and also to be the patron and helper of younger and less eminent men, and was connected with that warm and earnest intert-st which he ever felt in the progress of knowledge, and with the deference with which he received new facts and suggestions from any quarter. These qualities, apparent in his connections with Amorican Geology, were e(|ually valuable in his relations to science in its general aspect. A man so gifted, fortunate in his genius, his education, his outward eireumsti nees, and in his appearance on the stage at a time when Geology had gathered in some of its greatest harvests of iacts. and was waiting for a master mind to arrange liiem, had a ^reat opportunity, which Lyell had the energy and ability to seize. He was thus able to become tlie guid- ing mind among his contemporaries in geological theory, and to hold liis pre-eminence down to the end of his life, and through all the great changes which occurred in the rapid development of the science. For nearly 45 years, his works have been the text-books of geologists, and though the great impetus which they primarily gave has thrown the study of the earth forward into an entirely new position : — the last editions of the Elements and Principles are still in the van of the science. 11^ f The position which he thus occupied i.s one to which he was in every way justly entitled. His hirgc and judicial mind had always a clear perception of the true method of natural history. He saw that the foundations of our knowledge of {;eolo