CONFERENCE OF DELEGATES OF 
CORRESPONDING SOCIETIES. 
The Conference was held in the Jehanghir Hall, Imperial Institute, 
London, on September 24 and 29, under the presidency of Sir Arthur 
Smith Woodward, F.R.S. 
Fifty-eight delegates signed the register, representing sixty-four 
societies. 
Thursday, September 24. 
AvDDRESS on Geology as a Subject for Local Societies, by Sir Arthur 
Smith Woodward, F.R.S., President of the Conference. 
WuEN I had the honour of presiding over this Conference in 1905, my introductory 
remarks were somewhat discursive and ranged over various aspects of the work of 
the Corresponding Societies. On the present occasion, as befits advancing age, I 
propose to be less ambitious and refer only to a single subject connected with the 
researches which have interested me during most of my life. It has been customary 
of late years for the Chairman in this way to limit his opening address, and I cannot 
do better than follow the example of my immediate predecessors. I wish to speak 
of geology and paleontology as furnishing opportunities for profitable research to 
members of the Societies who have other daily occupations and can only devote some 
of their leisure to the pursuit. 
Modern learning—natural science—is in danger of becoming as much the 
prerogative of privileged corporations as was medieval learning when it was monopolised 
by the monasteries and other ecclesiastical bodies. The results, it is true, are no 
longer expounded in Latin or Greek ; but modern scientific papers and treatises are 
so thoroughly permeated with newly-invented technical terms which are supposed to 
give exactitude even if they do not express new ideas, that it is increasingly difficult 
for a layman to understand them. The conclusions which are prepared for outsiders 
in plain language have often to be taken on trust. There are still some branches of 
science, however, which a non-specialist can help by making desultory observations 
and collecting materials ; and geology and paleontology are among the number. 
Perhaps the most obvious service which the casual observer can render to geology 
is to watch temporary excavations and prepare exact records of them accompanied, 
if possible, by photographs. The Geological Survey has now published maps of all 
parts of the country, usually with explanatory memoirs, and it is easy to use these 
as the basis for further observations which may either confirm, extend, or correct 
those already made. If there are fossils or special rock-structures to be collected, as 
many as possible should be kept until they have been exhaustively studied. 
Among temporary excavations may be included the working-faces of quarries in 
which fissures or caves are sometimes exposed. The contents of these fissures are 
usually thrown away as rubbish without adequate examination, but they sometimes 
include bones and other fossils which are of the greatest interest. It is sufficient to 
recall the fissures near Frome in which the late Mr. Charles Moore discovered important 
Rheetic fossils, the fissure near Ightham, Kent, from which Mr. Lewis Abbott obtained 
the remains of several Arctic Mammals dating back to the Glacial Period, and the 
fissure at Doveholes, Derbyshire, from which the late Sir William Boyd Dawkins 
recovered many teeth and bones of Mammals of Pliocene age. 
Gravel pits are also well worth watching not only for the fossils they may contain, 
but also for occasional ‘foreign’ pebbles which are either remnants of geological 
formations which no longer exist or denote changes in topography of which there may 
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