CXXXIi ANNIVERSARY MEETING. 
acquainted with the wants of the science and the means by which they 
may be supplied, or its further interests promoted ; but Government 
establishments, in which alone Metropolitan Geological Museums 
can be formed, have no such Council; and the collections bemg 
public, privileges must be much more limited than in a Society, 
where the property belongs to the individual Fellows, and the numbers 
are comparatively very small. 
For these reasons it is conceived that the British collection ought 
to continue in the possession of the Society, being there most available 
to scientific students, and constituting the most important portion of 
the Museum. 
With respect to the rejection of rock-specimens from these series, 
it is believed that Organic Remains cannot be rightly understood with- 
out a reference to the formations in which they are found ; and I 
hope to be excused for observing, that many of the most important 
problems connected with geology cannot be worked out without the 
aid of such specimens. Some British sedimentary deposits cannot 
be represented by fossils; others but very partially or locally ; and 
where organic remains most abound, they cannot convey an idea of 
the series of strata in which they occur, or of the changes the latter 
undergo in different districts. A French geologist familiar with the 
Paris basin would, it is conceived, be most interested in the resem- 
blance between the testacea of the calcaire grossiére and the London 
clay, when he saw before him a drawer of argillaceous cubes and sili- 
ceous sands, representing the whole thickness of the deposits and the 
leading mineral changes, but without a trace of a calcareous bed. An 
equally vivid impression could not be derived from language. It is 
conceived that descriptions cannot convey to the mind a perfect know- 
ledge of rock series, and that the best are far more difficult to retain 
in the memory than characters obtamed from hand-specimens. The 
foreigners whom I had the honour of attending m the Museum pre- 
viously to their field-researches, were as desirous of seeing rock- 
specimens as fossils. The value of stratigraphical series to the in- 
experienced in practical investigations, to whom the Society must 
look for its future effective support, and who will resort to the 
Museum for instruction, is almost beyond estimate. It was fre- 
quently regretted that the cabinets did not possess series illustrative 
of the changes in the carboniferous deposits from the south-west coal- 
field to Scotland, with suites of marme, freshwater, or terrestrial re- 
mains, for the purpose of conveying to the mind of visitors, by actual 
inspection and comparison of successive series, proofs of the changes 
from one condition to another, which the earth underwent at only 
one remote period of its existence. The relatively vast intervals of 
time between the formation of an upper and a iower coal series, 
separated by 1000 or 2000, or a greater number of feet of unpro- 
ductive measures, could not be effectively conveyed by words or 
sections, or represented at all by fossils; but a drawer of sandstones 
and conglomerates obtained from such an intermediate deposit, and 
exhibiting undeniable evidence of great wearing down of pre-existing 
rocks, would strongly impress the beholder with the fact that a long 
\ Ste, ear = 
