RELATION OF BIOLOGY TO GEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION. 363 



ical organizations. Those which may be* made upon the individual 

 investigator relate to the manner of prosecuting his work and of pub- 

 lishing its results, and also to his final disposition of the evidence upon 

 which his conclusions are based. Claims upon associations or societies 

 relate to the character and methods of publication; those upon muse- 

 ums, to the conservation and installation of fossil remains and of the 

 records pertaining to them; and those upon organizations, to the pres- 

 ervation of the integrity of geological science. 



Among the necessities of geological science which require the enforce- 

 ment of these claims are those which arise from its extensive range, 

 the interrelation of its various branches, and the cumulative character 

 of the evidence upon which it is based. Its extensive range makes it 

 impossible that any one investigator should compass more than a small 

 part of the whole field, the interrelation of its branches requires that 

 each branch should be investigated with direct reference to all the 

 others, and the cumulative character of the evidence which constitutes 

 its foundation requires that every item of that evidence should be con- 

 ventionally judged. These conditions shoir that it is the public and 

 not the individual that must be the final arbiter of all questions per- 

 taining to the results of investigation. It is, therefore, essential that 

 the public should be furnished with all the evidence upon which the 

 individual reaches his conclusions, and that this evidence should be so 

 preserved as to be accessible to all investigators. 



In all such arbitrations a clear distinction must necessarily be made 

 between evidence and testimony. The former rests upon facts and is 

 therefore intrinsically infallible. The latter rests only upon individual 

 judgment and is in every case liable to be modified even by its authors, 

 and to be questioned, if not opposed, by others. Facts observed and 

 recorded, and material collected and preserved, constitute a perpetual 

 source of evidence, but personal authority can have no permanently 

 exclusive or dominant place with relation to geological science, and 

 acceptable personal responsibility for published conclusions and an- 

 nouncements of discovery must be confined to those which are sup- 

 ported by tangible evidence and by reference to all obtainable funda- 

 mental and relevant facts. 



In biological geology the principal evidence necessary to be obtained 

 is of two kinds, biological material in the form of fossil remains, and 

 stratigraphic conditions with relation to geological structure and gen- 

 eral stratigraphic classification. The fossil remains must necessarily 

 be collected for study, and science justly demands that they should be 

 placed where they will ever after be accessible to all investigators. It 

 is also essential that observations of stratigraphical conditions should 

 be made iu immediate connection with the collection of fossil remains, 

 and that such observations and collections should in all cases be 

 so recorded and published that every locality may be readily revisited 

 and identified, and every observation repeated by any other observer. 



