Reports and Proceedings—Geological Society of London. 377 
1877, with supplements for 1874—76. The volume maintains the 
high character of those preceding it for fullness, accuracy and method, 
and it is not too much to say that geologists owe a large debt of 
gratitude to its painstaking editor Mr. Whitaker, and to its several 
sub-editors and contributors. Such recognition, moreover, is 
especially due when we remember that the work, which must in its 
preparation often prove irksome and uninteresting, is undertaken by 
busy men who devote to it their leisure hours and private time 
without any remuneration whatever. There is no need to testify to 
the value of the work. Whoever attempts to keep up with the 
progress of the science, cannot do so by any individual effort, while 
to the specialist the labour that the Geological Record ought to save 
must be very great. We say ought to save, because, owing to the 
increasing delay in the publication of the work, we question whether 
it can fulfil many of the requirements of those actually engaged in 
particular researches. This delay must greatly interfere with its 
present value. It is true that as a work of reference each volume 
will from year to year become more valuable, but those who sub- 
scribe are apt to look upon it in a personally utilitarian point of 
view. Great difficulty arises, as we are told by the editor, from the 
impossibility of noting many publications until long after they have 
appeared, and this remark no doubt refers especially to the foreign 
publications. Such difficulties and delays require that the plan of 
the Geological Record should be in some way altered to allow of a 
more speedy issue of the annual volume than has at present been 
found practicable. The volume for 1579 ought now to be in the 
hands of subscribers. 
It has been suggested that as soon as sufficient material has been 
accumulated, a volume might be published, irrespective of the date 
of publication of the works. This plan, however, would not only 
entail more labour on the editor and subscribers, but be productive 
of some confusion. The simplest plan, it seems to us, would be to 
print merely the titles of foreign papers. ‘Then probably it would 
not be difficult to largely increase the number of contributors, who 
had only to send in a list of titles from time to time. Short abstracts 
of all works published in Britain might still appear. By some such 
alteration in plan, it is to be hoped that the Geological Record may 
be enabled to continue, and to increase the sphere of usefulness that 
it has so well commenced, and by which it has so much assisted in 
the advancement of Science. 
Loon TS AND PROCHERDINGS: 
Piiaee! cid 
GroLocicaL Soctety oF Lonpon. 
June 23, 1880.—Robert Etheridge, Esq., F.R.S., President, in the 
Chair.—The following communications were, read :— 
1. ‘On the Skull of an Jchthyosaurus from the Lias of Whitby, 
apparently indicating a new species (L. Zetlandicus, Seeley), preserved 
in the Woodwardian Museum of the University of Cambridge.” By 
Prof. H. G. Seeley, F.R.S., F.G.S. 
