The Scottish School of Geology *

Abstract

I.FOR the first time in the history of University Education in Scotland, we are to-day met to begin the duties of a Chair specially devoted to the cultivation of Geology and Mineralogy. ' Though Science is of no country nor kin, it yet bears some blanches which take their hue largely from the region whence they sprang, or where they have been most closely followed. Such local colourings need not be deprecated, since they are both inevitable and useful. They serve to bring out the peculiarities 0f each climate, or land, or people, and it is the blending of all these colourings which finally gives the common neutral tint of science. This is in a marked degree true of Geology. Each country where any part of the science has been more particularly studied, has given its local names to the general nomenclature, and its rocks have sometimes served as types from which the rocks of other regions have been classified and described. The very scenery of the country, reacting on the minds of the early Observers, has sometimes influenced their observations, and has thus left an impress on the general progress of the science. As we enter to-day upon a new phase in the history of Geology among us here, it seems most fitting that we should look back for a little at the past development of the science in this country. There was a time, still within the memory of living men, when a handful of ardent original observers here carried geological speculation and research to such a height as to found a new, and, in the end, a dominant shool of Geology.