Editorials. 



It is the chief function of the national, state and provincial 

 geological surveys to bring forth the great concrete facts relative 

 to the structure and resources of their several fields. Within 

 their special domains they also do an important work in the cor- 

 relation of structures and formations, in the systematic aggrega- 

 tion of the facts, in the organizing of results, and in the 

 development of the fundamental principles of geological science. 

 To some extent they are permitted to do this beyond their own 

 fields, but in the main the boundaries of these fields are the 

 limits of their coordinations. They therefore leave a great 

 function to be performed by some other agency in the coordina- 

 tion of interstate, international, and intercontinental factors. 

 They are also restrained by their relationships to a somewhat 

 too narrowly utilitarian public from devoting much direct atten- 

 tion to the solution of the deeper and broader problems that 

 constitute the soul of science, though their contributions bear 

 upon these in the most radical and important way. In the 

 primary work of systematic observation, and the development 

 of the immediate conclusions that spring therefrom, these sur- 

 veys surpass all other agencies in the value of their contributions 

 to the growth of the science, but in the secondary and ulterior 

 work of correlation, in the synthetic aggregation and organization 

 of results, and in the analytical and philosophical treatment of the 

 whole, they need to be supplemented by agencies whose facilities 

 and limitations lie in other lines, agencies whose relations and 

 dependencies are complementary in nature. This secondary 

 and ulterior work, in some degree, has been done by individual 

 master students of systematic and philosophical geology, but to a 

 very great extent it has not been done at all. It is a function which 

 properly falls to universities, if the universities can only rise to 



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