i8 95 . NOTES AND COMMENTS. 363 



Until certain conditions are fulfilled, we cannot pretend to 

 welcome this change ; and we trust that those responsible will not 

 regard us as undue cavillers if we venture on certain suggestions. 

 Let us say that the abbreviations employed in the author-index are 

 so good that any glossary of them is really unnecessary. The space 

 would be better devoted to informing the Fellows, as heretofore, 

 precisely what parts of the journals listed have been received. The 

 omission of a separate list of maps received is also to be regretted, 

 and must be due to some oversight. As for the author-index, we 

 have always said, and shall ever continue to say, that the value of 

 such a list depends on its completeness. We do not complain that 

 the compilers have omitted to index the paper on " The Homes and 

 Migrations of the Earliest known Forms of Animal Life," contributed 

 by Dr. Hicks to our December number, although they have indexed 

 a similar paper by Dr. Hicks from another periodical, and have not 

 omitted other papers in our number. But we mean to say that a list 

 of only those papers which have been received by the Geological 

 Society is necessarily and admittedly incomplete as a list of geological 

 literature, and is, therefore, of small value to the geological student. 

 In all lists of this kind it is the out-of-the-way papers that one wants 

 to discover, and these are the very ones absent from the present list. 

 With the disappearance of Dagincourt's Annuaire, an opening is 

 presented to the Geological Society of doing a piece of work of world- 

 wide importance, and not merely one for the delectation of its own 

 Fellows. We cannot altogether overlook the fact that the present list 

 is disfigured by some ugly mistakes, not to be excused as misprints, 

 which ought never to have been passed by the Council, or which might 

 at least have been corrected on an erratum-slip. The names of contri- 

 butors to the Quarterly Journal at all events might be spelled correctly. 

 Our chief objection to the subject-index is that it is not a subject- 

 index at all, merely an index, and a very incomplete one, to the 

 catch-words of the titles. We will only ask any worker, who is 

 sufficiently interested, to look up his own subjects in this index and to 

 see if he considers the references at all adequate. If a subject-index 

 is to be made at all, it must be made properly, and with a due appre- 

 ciation of the difficulty of the task. We have found the twenty pages 

 here devoted to it useless as a guide, and have had to go through the 

 author-index on our own account in order to complete and correct 

 the so-called subject-index. 



If these few suggestions be accepted by the Geological Society in 

 the spirit in which they are proffered, we shall hope next year to be 

 able to congratulate it, not merely on its intentions, but on its accom- 

 plishment of them. 



The Earthquake at Laibach. 



The recent Austrian earthquakes furnish an instructive com- 

 mentary on an article we publish this month on " The After-Shocks 



2 d 2 



