310 Notes and Comments. 
sections, and memoirs, the enormous value of such know- 
ledge to mining, civil engineering, agriculture, and education, 
and indirectly to the development of the mineral resources of 
the whole Empire, and then reflect that the total annual cost 
or the Geological Survey of England, Wales, Scotland, and 
Ireland is somewhere near 20, ooo! —less, that is to say, than 
the salary and fees we have been accustomed to pay every year 
to a single Law Officer of the Crown—we should find it difficult 
to bear patiently with any narrow or short-sighted official 
view. But the time is opportune, I think, when. we may ask 
whether the Survey is fulfilling all the functions that should be 
expected of it ; whether it is adequately supported and financed 
by the Government ; whether it should not be encouraged to 
develop along lines which, hitherto, from sheer poverty of 
official support, have been found impracticable.’ 
Prof. Boulton covers a wide field in his address, other sub- 
jects reviewed being the Development of Concealed Coalfields, 
Geological Features of the Visible Coalfields which bear upon 
the Distribution and Structure of Concealed Coalfields ; the 
Need for a Systematic Survey by Deep Borings ; Chemical 
and Microscopical Investigation of Coal Seams; Geology of 
Petroleum ; Underground Water, and Organisation of Expert 
Knowledge. 
ZOOLOGICAL SECTION 
An idea of the nature of Prof. E. W. MacBride’s presidential 
address to the Zoological Section may be gathered from his 
first paragraph. ‘All of us are agreed that our country 
has entered into this conflict with clean hands, and is striving 
to attain high and noble aims; but many of us think that the 
attainment of those aims has been to a considearble extent 
hindered by a neglect on the part of our rulers and organisers 
to take advantage of the results obtained by scientific research, 
and also by nei neglect to provide adequate means for the 
continuance of that research. Hence the Organising Committee 
of the Section has very wisely sought to encourage the pro- 
duction at this meeting of papers setting forth those results 
of zoological research which have either a direct economic 
value as bearing on the rearing of useful animals, or an indirect 
economic one as teaching us how to combat harmful parasites 
both of animals and man. But we must never forget that 
whilst the justification of a science in the long run—at any rate 
in the eyes of the many—may reside in the value of its applica- 
tions, 
LAWS OF INHERITANCE— 
yet the fust condition of its assured progress is the 
resolute adherence to the investigation of its underlying laws ; 
and surely of all these laws the most fundamental in the case 
of biology are the laws of inheritance. These laws, as we are 
Naturalist, 
