APPALACHIA.
The Annual Address of the President.
By Samuel H. Sccdder.
January 9, 1878.
Our first President, on withdrawing from office, very appro-priately sketched for you the formation and early history ofthis Association, which owed its existence in large measure tohis enterprise, scientific standing and zeal. He thus placed onrecord what would otherwise have been known to our success-ors only by uncertain tradition. The more recent history ofour Club, however, is written in its published Proceedings, andit would be a work of supererogation for me to pass it in ex-tended review at this time. In inviting your attention, there-fore, to the explorations and surveys of various kinds whichhave been undertaken in North America during the past year,I shall be complementing the work of the Club, and prove, Ihope, how deep and wide-spread is that zeal for the acquisitionof geographical knowledge — using that term in its broadestsignification — which, in this district, shows its energy throughthe medium of our Association.
Unquestionably, the most important among these explorationsare the government surveys of the unsettled parts of thenational domain. The oldest of these, the Geological andGeographical Survey of the Territories, under Dr. Hayden,last year completed its field work in Colorado ; so that this newstate, although perhaps the most diversified in our union, entersupon life under most propitious circumstances, its whole terri-
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APPALACHIA. I.