Notes and Comments. i8i 



THE FIELD GEOLOGIST. 



Notwithstanding the undoubted merit of the paper, we 

 must say we sympathise with the president, Mr. G. W. Lamp- 

 lugh, F.R.S., who commented on the high importance, both to 

 biologists and to stratigraphers, of intensive paLieontological 

 studies of this kind. He wished, at the same time, to call 

 attention to the difficulties felt by the field geologist, when 

 robbed of his crude nomenclature of the commoner fossils by 

 the precise definition and complicated analysis now attempted 

 by the palaeontologists. For general service some kind of 

 name was essential, but was becoming increasingly difficult 

 to acquire or retain. For example, it was most desirable to 

 be able to express, as proof that certain beds were Upper Lias, 

 that they yielded Ammonites communis, hifrons and serpentimis, 

 for every geologist would understand the statement. It might 

 be based, quite soundly, on material so poor that no palaeon- 

 tologist could name the specimens, or so good that only a very 

 small number of specialists in these particular forms v/ould 

 dare to do so. The growing difficult}^ would have to be met 

 by some means, even if it entailed a duplication of nomenclature. 

 We might have to continue to use indispensable names in a 

 general sense, perhaps with some indication by type or symbol 

 to warn the specialist.* 



THE GLACI.'^L PERIOD. 



A quarter of a century ago Prof. Kendall had much to do 

 with the formation of the new school of Glacialists, which 

 endeavoured to interpret the drift phenomena of this country 

 on the basis of one Ice vSheet with an oscillating ice-front. 

 This theory simplified the complicated evidences supplied by the 

 newer deposits in this country, though for a time the upholders 

 of the ' submergence ' theory, and those who held the belief 

 that there were numbers of different glacial periods, held sway. 

 But since that time, the submergers having become submerged, 

 and the ' many glacial periods '-men having left us or having 

 been converted, the new school practically holds the field. 

 Prof. Kendall, hke Jupiter, had a number of attendant 

 satellites, some of whom in recent years had feared that the 

 planet showed traces of wobbling in its orbit, though as true 

 satellites they were perforce destined to dance round the 

 chief whatever course he took, yet perhaps wondering 

 whither the path might lead. This question is now settled, 

 however, oddly enough by a German publication (already 



* The Author, in reply to the President, pointed out that, while it 

 was undesirable to use the names Ammonites stviatits and A. capricoruus 

 with the wide meaning formerly given to them by stratigraphical workers, 

 yet such terms as ' Capricorn ammonite ' and ' stviatits-hke ammonite ' 

 could be so used. 



•1918 June 1. 



