DISCOURS DE M. VAN DE WEYER A LA SOCIÉTÉ ROYALE DE GÉOLOGIE

After the allusion made by your Président to Belgium, to the scienlific labours of my countrymen, and to myself, and after Ihe kind manner with which bis words were recived,

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I am in duty bound to overcome the nalural drcad of making a speech in english, and to try to express to him and to you, as well as I can, my decp sensé of gratitude for the honour you hâve done us.

If ever one of your poets thinks of singing the Pleasures ofpolitical Ufe, let him take my word for it tliat there is no pleasure more gratifying, more pure and elevating tlian the one which a foreign minister feels when his counlry and his coutrymen arc praised by such a man as your worthy Président, and when that praise is applaudcd and rcsponded to by such an assembly as I hâve now the honour of addressing. I now feel that I shall be justified in showing some national pride and in speaking with some confidence of the merits of our geologists. You hâve, sir, very considéra te] y named only four of them, because you kindly wished to leave me something to say and some names to add to your list. We should bave been iinworlby of the unbounded richess with which a bountiful Providence lias endowed our soil, if, satisfied with deriving froin them ail the material advanlages, ail the comforts, ail the luxuries, we had nol aimed at reaching a higher sphère, and tried to study them with a pure and disinterested love of science. — A few men gifted with gcnius bave, in Belgium as else wberc, had at the end of the xvi' L century , some glimpses of the future importance of geology. Those guesses at trulh are forgotlen. But, from the moment that geology, resting on the basis of philosophical induction, bas becomeone of the mosl vigorbus branches of the tree of knowledge, supported in ils growlh by ail the sister branches, the number of men who, in Belgium, hâve bestowed upon it the whole of their lime and of their faculties bas encreased so much that it would require more

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lime tlian you woulcl allow me and more knowledge than I possess, to give you the shortest analysis of their labours. However, the names of Robert de Limbourg , De Launay and De Burtin, geologists of the xvni ,h century, are still remembered ; and those of Bommel, Dethier and D'Omalius d'Halloy are still quoted as authorities every where. — But it is wilh the birth of our political indépendance that geology, like ail the olher sciences, has taken a much greater development in Belgium , as if ail felt that it is nol enough for a nation lo occupy a place in the political. world, and that, in order to enjoy a full and complète existence, an existence in which other people take a higher interest, a nation must also conquer a place in the scientific world. Then it was that the Royal Academy of Brussels proposed yearly a prise for the best memoir on the geological construction of ail ouiprovinces ; and to those memoirs are altached the well known names of Drapiez, Cauchy, Shinninger, Engelspach Larivière, Davreux, Galeotti, Nyst, Dumont. Then it was that, for the first Unie, I read with an undescribable pleasure in one of the able and profound anniversary speeches of this Society an account, given by sir Roderick Murchison, of the progress of what lie already called the belgian school of geology. Then it was that this society, struck with the giganlic labours of M. Dumont, assigned to him th« Wollaston gold mcdal for his memoir, map and sections of the geological constitution of the province of Liège. No one who lakes the slightest interest in the progress of geology in Belgium has forgotten the glowing terms in which D r Buckland spoke of the task achieved by M. Dumont. The medal awarded to him in Brussels was certainly a great national récompense; but the voice of D r Buckland sounded to him

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and lo us like the voice of posterity. Those of your members who hâve extended the tield of their observations to Belgium, professor Sedgwick, sir Roderick Murchison, D r Fitton, sir Charles Lyell well know what an impetus that honour confered on a Belgian lias given to the cultivation of geology, as they hâve also been able to ascertain by personal intercourse with what zeal, what deep knowledge their own discoveries hâve been adopted by and adapted to our country.

Il is now high lime that I should say a few words in answer to what it has kindly plcased your Président to say about myself. It seems to him, and such an acute and profound observer mustberight. that a ministerof eighteen yeacs standing is now a days one of the curiosities of the political world. I perfectly agrée with him in the explanation given by him of that sort of phenomenon which surprises me less than it does him. A few words will explain (lie pheiiumenon which would bave been equally observed if any other had occupied the same position.

If the geological phenomena of Belgium bave sometimes perplexed the ablest observées, our political révolutions hâve often produced the same effect on foreign statesmen, who knew not what Ihe Belgians were at. One great, deeply rooted passion kept them unruly, dissatisfied, and turbulent — the natural passion for national indépendenee.

That once satisfied at the priée of a lasl long convulsion, and our old municipal and provincial institutions buried under heeps of foreign laws and regulalions, having sprung lo life again,lhewhole nation cooled down, and no personal passions, no misdirecled ambition came to disturb the happy state of things created by the last slruggle. Thus may be explained the révolutions of the past and the stability of the

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présent, which, extending its influence on men and things, hâve not only kept us in place, but hâve also secured the country against the inroad of the lava of neighbouring volcanoes. — One word more: several.succesful attempts hâve been made by English and Belgian geologists to identify the Belgian formations with those of England. Is there not also, Gentlemen, some resemblance between the character of the two people, in our same respect for Law, in our attachment to our institutions, in our loyalty to our sovereigns, in ail those qualitics which hâve enahled the two nations to stand erect and unshaken in the middle of the convulsions of Europe? We hâve in thaï respect learnt many things from you, and I could, returning the compliment paid to me, point out many an English diplomatist who enjoys the advantage of having been left undisturbed in the fulfilment of his duty for more years than I hâve had the happiness of spending among you.