PROFESSOR OF GEOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA; F. G. S., &c. WITH AN ABSTRACT OF THE PROCEEDINGS AT THEIR MEETING. NEW YORK AND LONDON: 1844. ADDRESS GENTLEMEN OF THE ASSOCIATION, HAVING been kindly invited by you to preside at the last annual meeting of the Society, it devolves upon me, in accordance with our rules, to bring before you on this occasion a brief history of the recent labors of American Geologists, and to take a rapid survey of the pres ent condition of geological research in the United States. In attempting to discharge this acceptable but by no means easy duty, I am well aware that my sketch will exhibit many defects and omissions, incident in part to the dispersed state of my materials, but attributable in greater part I fear, to my own imperfect fitness for the task. Those deficiencies in this short review of American geology, which you cannot but impute to myself, your generosity will, I feel assured, indulgently par don, but those others, which you must ascribe to the hitherto insufficient concentration of scientific effort in our country, I would not have you so lightly overlook. On the other hand, I would here invite your attention to the difficulties, which though much abated, still beset any one who attempts either to gather into shape the scattered materials of American geology, or to prosecute extensively a connected train of research. It was in full view of these difficulties and in the hope of lessening them, that our Association was organized. And let us here congratulate each other on the success which has attended our efforts. Scattered over a country of great extent and kept asunder by distance and the claims of professional duties, the American geologists were laboring amid all the inconveniences of solitude, each hewing his lonely path through the mighty wilderness of our rocks, isolated in the worst sense of the term,—in the only sense really repulsive to the genuine student of nature,-I mean, isolated from the sympathy, the counsel, the instruction, of those engag. ed in the same glorious enterprise. Though fellow-laborers we were not companions, for we seldom met, knew imperfectly each others' performances, and were still less acquainted with each others' social and scientific worth. Many of you, by your published researches had made your labors to be valued, and had won the sincere respect of the rest, |