﻿civ PROCEEDINGS OP THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [May I908, 



Dr. Koettlitz on the rocks and fossils of Franz Josef Land.^ Some 

 interesting additioDS to our acquaintance with the glacial phenomena 

 of the Far North have been made by Col. Feilden,^ Prof. Garwood, 

 and Prof. Gregory.^ 



Lastly, as regards the information which we receive on foreign 

 geology, I would refer to the notices from time to time communicated 

 to the Society by different Government Departments, as received 

 from officers in the Army, I^avy, and Diplomatic or Consular Service. 

 Many new and interesting facts have thus been brought to our know- 

 ledge, and through our Quarterly Journal have been made known to 

 the world at large. As an example of such communications I may 

 cite the notes and specimens submitted by the late Hydrographer, 

 Admiral Sir William Wharton, from Clipperton Atoll in the N"orth 

 Pacific Ocean, which enabled Dr. Teall to describe the remarkable 

 phosphatization of a trachyte underlying a deposit of guano.^ 



III. Petrography. 



For many centuries before the Geological Society was founded 

 the science of Mineralogy had flourished as an important and 

 popular branch of natural knowledge. It was held to embrace 

 the whole mineral kingdom, but in practice its cultivators devoted 

 their attention chiefly to those parts of the terrestrial crust which 

 appear in the form of simple minerals. Collectors might add to 

 their cabinets beautiful or singular examples of rocks, concretions, 

 organic remains, or other mineral substances, but these were 

 generally gathered together rather as curiosities than as objects 

 having a history worthy of patient study. Naturally, therefore, 

 when at last attention was awakened to the many interesting 

 questions suggested by the various materials that compose the 

 earth's crust, those who occupied themselves with such subjects 

 were chiefly mineralogists. The various sciences which have since 

 grown up in the course of the investigation of that crust — geology, 

 petrography, and palaeontology — had not yet taken shape, but all 

 lay in embryo within the time-honoured domain of Mineralogy.' 



1 Q. J. liii (1897) 477 & liv (1898) 620, 64G. ^ q^ j ^^ (^ggg) 50 721. 



^ Q. J. liv (1898) 197 & Iv (1899) 681. * Q. J. liv (1898) 230. 



^ As an interesting survival of this period, reference may be made to the 

 present constitution of the Academy of Sciences in the Institute of France, 

 which was founded in 1795. Mineralogy still holds its place there as the 

 title of one of the eleven sections into which the Academy is divided. But it 

 includes the cognate sciences, though these are not named, and almost all its 

 members are now geologists. 



