Notes on the Geological Reports of British Guiana. 



By the Editor. 



10 much mischievous information about these 

 reports is ignorantly spread by persons, who, 

 not having taken the trouble to carefully read 

 them, perhaps not having read them at all, yet venture 

 to adversely criticise their contents, that it is desirable 

 that some one should publicly refer to the matter in 

 order to corre6l the misconception that seems to prevail 

 about them. 



True the reports are by no means enticingly written, 

 nor is the matter of a kind that lends itself to easy 

 reading or assimilation ; and doubtless these are sufficient 

 reasons for the superficial reader to lay aside the volume 

 with some by no means favourable comment. But this 

 cannot decide upon the value of the work. 



Other readers there are again, who have dipped into 

 the pages of the reports, having formed no adequate idea 

 of the task attempted by the geological surveyors, and 

 who are thus quite unable to comprehend what was 

 really accomplished. And yet an outline of this task 

 has been well penned by one of the surveyors in his 

 preface to the reports, as though with an object of giving 

 to readers familiar with other lands, an idea of geological 

 work in a new and trackless region. 



" It can readily be understood that to explore such a 

 vast extent of thinly-inhabited country, equal in size to 

 England and Scotland together, covered with boundless 

 forests, and situated within the Tropics, was at best a 

 difficult and laborious undertaking. 



