338 Editorial Notes. 



The late Dr. S. P. Woodward recorded in his notebook, 1864: 

 " The collection of the late Dr. John Woodward, the founder of the 

 Chair of Geology in Cambridge, originally was kept locked, and 

 a bond for several thousand pounds was given by the Professor for 

 the security of tlie specimens. Two auditors were appointed yearly 

 by the University to go over the whole collection and compare 

 it witli the official catalogue to ascertain the safety of the specimens, 

 and to report to the Vice-Chancellor, who entertained them and 

 the Pi'ofessor at dinner. The dinner was paid for out of the 

 Woodwardian fund, and the guests were required by the will to drink 

 burgundy. The collection consists of about 10,000 specimens, chiefly 

 British fossils. By Woodward's will the Professor must be a 

 bachelor and a graduate of the University. The salary was £100, 

 with a further sum for the audit and dinner. The University lias 

 lately raised the Professor's salary to £300." It is hardly necessary 

 to add that this salary is now calculated on a more modern and 

 generous basis. 



* » * * # 



A HiGHLr successful dinner, in honour of those members of the 

 Geological Survej r and Museum Staff who have served with His 

 Majesty's Forces, was held at Anderton's Hotel, Fleet Street, on the 

 night -of April 30, with Sir Aubrey Strahan in the chair. Forty- 

 eight present and past members attended ; of this number twenty 

 have seen active service in one capacity or another. It is to be 

 regretted that distance or other circumstances prevented any of the 

 nine service members of the Edinburgh staff from being feted also by 

 their colleagues. 



Mb. Harold Cox's pamphlet, The Coal Industry : Bangers of 

 Nationalization (Longmans, Green & Co., 1919, price 6d.), should be 

 read by everyone, since there is not a single individual in this 

 country unaffected by the present enormous increase in the price of 

 coal. This rise in price is to a very large extent due to the spread 

 among the miners of ideas based upon unsound premises. Mr. 

 Harold Cox exposes very clearly the fallacies underlying the 

 arguments put forward by the Fabian Society and various miners' 

 organizations deriving their ideas from that source, in favour of 

 nationalization and bureaucratic control, and abolition of royalties. 

 These arguments are shown to be in their way triumphs of 

 irrelevancy and middle-class theorizing founded on out-of-date 

 statistics and applied to problems affecting mainly the relations of 

 capital and labour. It is impossible here to quote these points in 

 detail, but the author's comparison with the Post Office and his 

 remarks on Government departments in general are well worth 

 reading. It is categorically stated in a Fabian pamphlet on 

 nationalization that the State would be able to supply coal at £1 per 

 ton delivered to the cellar. In view of recent developments, largely 

 due to State interference, this makes somewhat ironical reading. 

 With regard to royalties, it is shown that with the present scale of 

 taxation, the State already gets back more than half the total, and 



