512 Canadian Record of Science. 



scheme of map colors ; but the reports of proceedings indi- 

 cate that action in these matters is tentative, uot final. 



The terms and the order adopted by the congress are as 

 follows: Of stratigraphic divisions, that with the highest 

 rank is group, then system, series and stage. The corres- 

 ponding chronological divisions are era, period, epoch and 

 age. There are propositions before the congress to distin- 

 guish the names of individual groups, systems, series and 

 stages by means of terminations. Thus it is proposed by 

 one committee that every name of a group shall end in 

 " ary" — Tertiary, Primary, Archeary; that names of sys- 

 tems shall end in " ic " — Cretacic, Carbonic, Siluric ; that 

 names of series shall end in "ian" — Eifelian, Laramian, 

 Trentonian ; and that names of stages shall terminate in 

 " in." Another committee has suggested that "ic" be used 

 for stages instead of systems. The adoption of such a plan 

 would enable a writer to indicate the taxonomic rank of a 

 terrane without adding a word for that purpose. Palseon- 

 tological nomenclature was another point considered by the 

 congress. From one point of view, palaeontology is a part 

 of geology, but from another, it is a part of biology. In so 

 far as it names genera and species, it is purely biologic, and 

 it would seem proper that the students of fossils unite with 

 the students of living animals and living plants in the 

 adoption of rules of nomenclature. 



~So action has yet been taken as to the nomenclature of 

 mineralogy, and action has also been deferred on the classi- 

 fication of eruptive rocks. It is to be hoped that it will be 

 deferred sine die. The congress is attacking its two most 

 important undertakings, the classification of terranes and 

 unification of map colors through the geological map of 

 Europe which it is preparing. It is the opinion of many 

 that the smallest unit of such classification should be the 

 stratigraphic system. What is this ? The congress im- 

 plies a definition in saying that a system includes more 

 than a series and less than a group, and that the Jurassic is 

 a system, but this gives only a meagre conception and we 

 need a full one. As the problem of classification demands 

 a true conception of a system, and as there is reason to 



