﻿IxXXvi PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [May I908, 



sedulously collected by thousands of observers, have been accurately 

 determined and amply described, while their life-zones have been 

 defined with greater precision than those of any other part of the 

 Geological Record in these islands, save perhaps the Upper Chalk. 

 It is needless to say that a large proportion of the numerous papers 

 which present the results of all this manifold and enthusiastic labour 

 in the field and in the cabinet has been laid before the Society and 

 has been printed in our publications. It is, of course, impracticable 

 to particularize on the present occasion even the more important 

 of these papers. I can only refer to a few of those which stand 

 out as landmarks in the progress of the science. One of the 

 earliest of them was the valuable memoir by Lonsdale, read to the 

 Society in 1829, in which he gave a detailed account of the Jurassic 

 series in the Bath district.^ Somewhat later came the great mono- 

 graph of Fitton, bearing the title of ' Observations on some of the 

 Strata between the Chalk & the Oxford Oolite in the South-East 

 of England.' This remarkable production fills 285 pages of the 

 fourth volume of the second series of Transactions, and is probably 

 the longest single paper ever published by the Society. But its 

 high merit amply justified the space allotted to it. Its exhaustive 

 examination of the stratigraphy, distribution, and palaeontology of 

 the various groups of strata to which it relates has guided all 

 subsequent research in this section of English geology. Its literary 

 excellence, hardly less conspicuous than its scientific merit, is 

 marked by that logical precision, conciseness, and grace of diction 

 which distinguished all its author's writings. Eitton's essay has 

 long since taken its place among the geological classics of this 

 country. 



Of much younger date are the monographs which, embodying 

 the general results obtained by previous observers, together with 

 much fresh material, have successively appeared in the Quarterly 

 Journal. A most material service is rendered to the advancement 

 of geology through the preparation of such monographs by those 

 who are themselves acknowledged masters of the subject of which 

 they treat. The important paper by Mr. Hudleston & the late 

 Prof. Blake on the Corallian Rocks of England, which we pub- 

 lished in 1877, may be taken as the type of this kind of essay. 

 To the same class belong Prof. Blake's papers on the Kimeridge 

 Clay (1875), on the Portland Rocks (1880), and on the correlation 

 of the Upper Jurassic Rocks of England and the Continent (1881); 

 ^ Trans, ser. 2, vol. iii, pp. 241-76. 



