﻿378 Correspondence — Prof. G. 8. Boulger. 



fauna showing the change to deeper-water conditions. Near Folke- 

 stone the change to the deeper water of the Grey-chalk sea is very 

 plain, and is seen to have been a gradual one. The discovery of 

 these Ked Clays is of exceeding interest, but it is misleading to speak 

 of them as analogous to the Gault. J. S. Gakdnek. 



Park House, St. John's Wood Park, N.W.. 

 May I7th, 1877. 



BE. WILLIAM SMITH'S GEOLOGICAL MAPS. 



SiE, — At a recent sale the copper-plates of William Smith's original 

 folio atlas of geologically coloured maps of England, sixteen in 

 number, including the index, published in 1821, came into the 

 possession of Mr. Edward Stanford, of Charing Cross, who is willing 

 to sell them at, as he writes to me, a trifling cost (for sixteen large 

 coppers), if purchased for the Geological Society. It would not pay 

 now-a-days to reprint maps only of historical interest ; but I venture 

 to think that the maps of the father of English Geology are worthy 

 of being preserved from the melting-pot, the doom of superannuated 

 copper-plates, and entrusted to the safe keeping of some -ehartered 

 society. I write this, therefore, to obtain the opinion of geologists 

 on the matter, and shall be glad to receive the names of gentlemen 

 who will subscribe for their purchase, as I propose, for presentation 

 to the Geological Society, which already possesses the original 

 manusci-ipt maps. G. S. Boulgeu, F.L.S., F.G.S. 



Scientific Club, 7, Savilb Row, 

 July 12, 1877. 



PREMATURE CONCLUSIONS. 



Sir, — The practice of the Geological Society, of publishing 

 " abstracts " of papers read at the meetings, before the papers 

 themselves are published, is sometimes of great service both to the 

 authors and to the public ; but it has this serious drawback, that the 

 public generally found their conclusions regarding the value of the 

 paper — and the correctness of the author's views — not on the paper, 

 but on the " abstract," which necessarily contains but an imperfect 

 statement of the data upon which the author has rested his argu- 

 ments ; and the probabilities are, that when the paper itself appears 

 in extenso some months afterwards, the men who have based their 

 conclusions upon the statements of the "abstract" will not care to 

 make themselves acquainted with the details and arguments of the 

 paper. 



This drawback has come with great force to my mind (as no 

 doubt it has done in the case of others) from the manner in which 

 the paper I had the opportunity of bringing before the Society has 

 been received and criticiized in several quarters. One geologist, for 

 whose opinion I entertain a high respect, wrote at once to intimate 

 that he could not accept my conclusions ; and when I naturally 

 replied that he had not had an opportunity of reading the details 

 upon which they had been founded, he replied that, " having seen 

 the 'abstract,' he knew already quite enough to satisfy his own m.ind 

 on the subject;" and I greatly fear my friend, who on a former 



