Notices of Memowrs—Discussion on Coal. Sint 
them and have undergone a similar amount of heat and pressure, 
especially the former. 
One word in conclusion. The reader of Dr. Preller’s papers will 
soon discover that he quotes as if they were authorities of equal 
value geologists who often express contradictory views. If one man 
says a group of rocks is late Paleozoic or early Mesozoic, and another 
that it is Archean, one of the two must be wrong, so hopelessly that it 
is no use quoting his opinion. Which of them seems to me to be right 
will be obvious from what I have written. This expresses opinions 
not lightly formed. More than thirty years ago I found the views 
(not of Italian geologists only) so widely discordant that I ceased to 
study their writings for any other purpose than finding out the 
position of sections supposed to be critical. From these I have been 
collecting evidence, by personal examination, visiting, on an average 
at least once in a year from 1881 to 1911, one or other important 
district, so as to test repeatedly the hypotheses both of myself and of 
others. The knowledge thus acquired emboldens me, audacious as it 
may seem, to express my complete dissent from those geologists who 
assert the existence of true schists and gneisses of Permian to Liassic 
age anywhere in the Alpine chain. 
NOTICES OF MEMOTRS. 
—_$§—_@——_<— 
T.—ReEport oF THE Jomnr Discusston on Coat at THE NEWCASTLE 
Meerine oF tHE British ASsocraTion. 
MONG the more important items in the programme of Section C 
at Newcastle may be mentioned the discussion with the members 
of the Chemical Section on ‘‘ The investigation of the chemical and 
geological characters of coal, with a view to its most effective 
utilization as fuel and to the extraction of by-products’”’. The dis- 
cussion formed a natural and appropriate corollary to the President’s 
address. A desire, to abolish the present haphazard methods of 
utilizing coal—the natural outcome of the backward state of our 
knowledge of the mineral and its many varieties—was the keynote 
of the debate; and the desire found immediate expression in the 
formation of a research committee of Section C to deal with the 
matter, as well as in the nomination of geological members to serve 
on the committee of Section B dealing with Fuel Economy. 
‘The discussion was most appropriately opened by Professor G. A. 
Lebour, who said that the geologist regards coal as a rock 
disposed in layers or seams sandwiched between a roof and a floor of 
other rocks, and subject to changes in thickness and to interruptions 
of continuity of various kinds. There are also changes in physical 
properties and composition, to investigate which he needs the help of 
others. It is his business to find the coal either by mapping the 
outcrops or, where there are none, by weighing circumstantial 
stratigraphical evidence of all sorts. He thus points out the possible 
extension of known, or the existence of hidden, coalfields. As to the 
composition of the coal in the seam asa whole, or in the different 
parts of the seam, he turns to the chemist for information. There is 
