[94] The first Report of this Committee was submitted to the Southport meeting of the Association in 1903. But the question is one of such importance in view of the rapidity with which some parts of our coast are in course of demolition that it deserves to be taken up as a national investigation. The country at large should contribute to the expense of applying the best means for arresting the waste of its shores. At present the contest has to be carried on by the riparian proprietors, who are often quite unable adequately to cope with it. _October_, 1904. [95] _Proc. Roy. Soc. Edin._, vol. x. (1879-80) p. 518. [96] _Report Brit. Assoc._, 1882, p. 95. [97] The hope here expressed has so far been realised by the appointment of a Committee of the Geological Congress at Paris in 1900 and the renewal and extension of this Committee at the following Meeting held in Vienna in 1903. The subjects of Earthquakes, Movements of elevation or depression in mountain chains and measurements of the value of Gravity were especially proposed for investigation. The recommendations of the Committee were approved by the International Association of Academies in London in the summer of 1904 and steps were then taken in the direction of international co-operation in each of the subjects suggested. _Note added_, October, 1904. VII The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin[98] By the universal consent of mankind, the name of Charles Darwin was placed, even during his lifetime, among those of the few great leaders who stand forth for all time as the creative spirits that have founded and legislated for the realm of Science. It is too soon to estimate with precision the full value and effect of his work. The din of controversy that rose around him has hardly yet died down, and the influence of the doctrines he propounded is extending into so many remote departments of human inquiry, that a generation or two may require to pass away before his true place in the history of thought can be definitely fixed. But the judgment of his contemporaries as to his proud pre-eminence is not likely ever to be called in question. He is enrolled among the _Dii Majorum Gentium_, and there he will remain to the end of the ages. When he was laid beside the illustrious dead in Westminster Abbey, there arose far and wide a lamentation as of personal bereavement. Thousands of mourners who knew only his writings, and judged of the gentleness and courtesy of his nature from these and from such hearsay reports as passed outwards from the privacy of his country home, grieved as for the loss of a dear friend. It is remarkable that probably no scientific man of his day was personally less familiar to the mass of his fellow-countrymen. He seemed to shun all the usual modes of contact with them. His weak health, domestic habits, and absorbing work kept him in the seclusion of his own quiet household. In later years his face was seldom to be seen at