... ... DISCUSSION ON REV. W. MITCHELL'S PAPER ON CRYSTALLOGRAPHY 213 ORDINARY MEETING, 17TH JUNE, 1867 ON THE RELATION OF METAPHYSICAL AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE TO ON GEOLOGICAL CHRONOLOGY, AND THE COGENCY OF THE ARGUMENTS BY WHICH SOME SCIENTIFIC DOCTRINES ARE SUPPORTED. (In reply to Professor Huxley's Discourse delivered at Sion College, DISCUSSION ON MR. REDDIE'S PAPER-Continued ON THE GEOMETRICAL ISOMORPHISM OF CRYSTALS, AND THE DERIVA- PREFACE. IN issuing the second volume of the Journal of Transactions of the VICTORIA INSTITUTE but few prefatory remarks are necessary. The volume will be found to contain several valuable Papers, not the least important amongst which is that on the Geometrical Isomorphism of Crystals, and the Derivation of all other Forms from those of the Cubical System, by the Rev. WALTER MITCHELL, M.A., V.P. As regards the Institute's progress during the past year, we need but say that it has been all that could have been expected, considering the short time that has elapsed since the foundation of the Society. THE EDITOR. JOURNAL OF THE TRANSACTIONS OF THE VICTORIA INSTITUTE, OR PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF GREAT BRITAIN. 27 ORDINARY MEETING, FEBRUARY 18, 1867. THE RT. HON. THE EARL OF SHAFTESBURY, K.G., PRESIDENT, The minutes of the previous meeting were read and confirmed, after which the following Paper was read by the Honorary Secretary in the absence of the Author: ON TERRESTRIAL CHANGES, AND THE PROBABLE OTWITHSTANDING the facts explained by geologists with regard to terrestrial mutations, the generality of mankind get so accustomed to and familiar with the configurations of our continents, during the comparatively brief period of their lives, that they look at them as they do at an artificial globe, and imagine that they have been the same since the days of Adam. The changes of the earth are so slow in comparison to the duration of our lives, that they are overlooked and forgotten. From the apparently quiet and regular succession of natural events to which we get accustomed, and the repugnance we feel to the idea that it is possible for the foundation of our habitation to be always changing, upheaving, depressing, and moving en masse, from clime to clime, without our being sensible of such movements, we are apt to attribute all changes to past ages, and deny the possibility of their going on during the period of our existence. Pythagoras taught, 2,350 years ago, that "the surface of the earth was ever changing; solid land had been converted into sea, and sea changed into dry land. Marine shells were found far distant from the deep, and the anchor had been found on the summit of hills. Peninsulas had been separated from the main land, and had become islands." "The changes of the earth," says Aristotle, "are so slow in comparison to the duration of our lives, that they are overlooked; and the migrations of people after great changes, or their removal to other regions, cause them to be forgotten. The distribution of land and sea does not endure throughout all time, but it becomes sea in those parts where it was land; and there is reason for thinking that these changes take place according to a certain system, and within a certain period. Everything changes in the lapse of ages." Whatever difference of opinion may exist as to the cause of the upheavals and subsidences of the lands, there can be none as to the fact of their occurrence. These terrestrial changes are now too well established to be controverted; the observed facts must be and are accepted. My object on this occasion is, not merely to confirm them, but to point out the order in which they occur, with the view of forming some idea of the probable ages of the existing continents. Various attempts have been made to compute the ages of geological formations, or the deposits of drifts with organic remains, by means of the rate of upheaval measured on any given coast at a certain time. Simple reference to the changes daily going on would at once show that such a method could only be adopted for a short period, within comparatively narrow limits, as the rate of rising and sinking is extremely variable, not only in countries far apart, but even along the coast of the same island. The western coast of South America, from Terra del Fuego to Panama, is subject to very irregular upheavals and depressions. So are New Zealand and Australia. Besides the slow normal mutations of the earth, there are also periodical actions of increasing intensity occurring during earthquakes, as on the coast of Chili in 1835, when the island of Santa Maria was upheaved ten feet in one day. The coast of Puzzuoli, near Naples, in 1538, was raised twenty feet in a single night. Therefore it is quite clear that no reliable data |