PREFATORY STATEMENT. / 



As to any objection to the term Pleistocene, I would willingly 

 have altered it to Post-Tertiary, Post-Cretaceous, or some equally 

 suitable title, bad such emendation, been suggested by the Council 

 on admission of the paper for reading. I trust. Gentlemen, that 

 the above statement of the case may suffice to show that it is 

 impossible for me to allow the papers to appear in the form recom- 

 mended by the Eeferee, or with any abridgment whatever. 



W. A. E. USSHER. 



On March 2nd I was informed that the Council would not 

 reconsider their original determination. On March 3rd I received 

 the MSS. from Mr. Dallas, which I now publish without any 

 alteration, addition, or elision (except as regards the supposed fault 

 in Mr. Pattison's Fowey section). 



If the decision of the Eeferee were taken upon papers prior to 

 their admission for reading, authors would have the option of with- 

 drawing their papers or not in the event of an adverse decision ; 

 and by incorporating my papers with the articles in the " Geological 

 Magazine," I should have been spared this unpalatable preface. 



By the present system very few long papers can be done justice 

 to in the brief extracts or abstracts to which the author is obliged 

 to confine himself in reading, so that if such papers be afterward 

 printed in short abstract, it is impossible for any one but the 

 Eeferee to judge of their contents. Whilst the universal admission 

 of papers for reading tends, on the one hand, to crowd out the longer 

 and more general papers, by placing a hasty observation of an 

 isolated section on a level with the geology of a county ; it entails, 

 on the other, the disagreeable necessity of curtailing lengthy papers, 

 not because they, in any way, transgress the rules laid down for 

 admission in extenso to the Society's Journal, but because their 

 publication would cause its "expansion be3'ond the limits which 

 economy prescribes. If a limit as to length were assigned to 

 general papers, and rules so clear and concise laid down that there 

 could be no misconstruction or misconception on the part of the 

 Referee, less scope for occult attacks would be afforded to indi- 

 viduals who, prejudiced perhaps with preconceived notions, may 

 now put their veto on the expression of contrary opinions, and 

 negative questions seen from a different point of view to their own. 



