INTRODUCTION. 15 1 



professors have to combine both University and Survey duties. 

 The Survey Departments have always preserved a strictly 

 scientific character, and while fulfilling to the utmost the 

 practical and commercial purposes for which they were in the 

 first instance called into existence, their systematic treatment 

 of vast land areas has furnished the pure science of geology 

 with a wealth of observations of inestimable value for its more 

 abstruse problems. 



The progress of geological cartography brought the results of 

 one State Survey into touch with those of its neighbours. So 

 far as geology is concerned, the present boundaries between 

 adjacent countries are merely of accidental character, even the 

 present configuration of a land surface is merely an episode in 

 the historical cycle of events; in the previous epoch lands now 

 separated may have been the common floor of a bygone sea. 

 The nature of geological and palaeontological studies necessi- 

 tates a constant interchange of knowledge between the different 

 countries of the globe. The geologists of the Paris basin, for 

 example, must know the results of the geologists of the London 

 basin, maps ought to agree, faunas ought to be compared; and 

 these considerations led to the institution of International 

 Geological Congresses, where geologists from all countries 

 might discuss the problems of common interest to the science. 

 Some of the greatest men of our time, in attending these 

 Congresses, have expressed their conviction that the intellectual 

 fellowship of interest renders them a humble means towards 

 a very great end, whereby nations, by better acquaintance 

 with each other, may become more firmly welded in political 

 friendship. 



Geology and palaeontology give great promise for the 

 twentieth century In another hundred years the whole 

 surface of the earth will perhaps be so well known, that works 

 on comparative topographical geology will be fully accomplished 

 along the lines which Eduard Suess has so ably initiated in 

 his Antlilz der Erde. If at the same time the structural and 

 physical problems of the solid earth-crust continue to be 

 accurately investigated in all parts of the earth, it may be 

 possible to determine the actual physical sequence of events in 

 the origin and development of our planet. 



Again, the palaeontologist notes with interest how the study 

 of past forms of life is brought every year into closer relation 

 with biological researches, and how, as faunas and floras from 



