EDITORIAL Ai 
son’s Stlurtan System, published in 1839, was even larger, as was 
also his Geology of Russia published in 1845. These publications 
set the pace, as it were, for books of pretension. 
In those days no one thought of taking a book on geology 
into the field with him—they were for use in the library or the 
laboratory. Nowadays many, probably most, working geologists, 
mining engineers, consulting geologists, students and instructors, 
not to mention miners and prospectors, carry, or want to carry, 
books with them in the field. To all such persons the size of 
the book to be carried is a matter of importance, and especially 
so on long or difficult trips when baggage must be light. To 
them these bungling big volumes, these ponderous tomes, are 
simply out of the question. And we are of the opinion that the 
carrying of books into the field ought to be encouraged, and 
that their being printed in octavo will encourage it and will, at 
the same time, increase their usefulness and widen their influence. 
If the big quartos had any more in them to the page than 
the octavos they would have that advantage at least, but they 
do not asarule. Take for example the annual reports or the 
monographs of the Geological Survey. The latter are printed 
in pica, so they contain no more to the page than octavo pages 
would in long primer. The annual reports are printed in the 
same type (long primer) and the pages are the same size as 
those of the bulletin (7.4" x 4.4" solid) and the only difference 
between them is that the heavy annual reports are made quartos 
by being printed on heavy paper with wide margins. 
Compare the weights of the annual reports and the bulletins: 
Bulletin 71 (octavo), with 744 pages, bound in cloth, weighs 
two pounds, ten ounces; the ninth annual report, a quarto of 73 
pages, weighs seven pounds, six ounces. In other words, the 
bulletin weighs less than half as much as the annual reports, 
page for page. 
The following advantages are claimed for the large volumes: 
1. They admit of large page plates of fossils, maps, or other 
illustrations, which are not possible with octavos. 
We reply: There is no denying that a map or plate shows 
