Geology and Mineralogy. 469 



Alexander Winchell. The committee has power to add to its 

 number. Dr. J. S. Newberry was appointed temporary chair- 

 man. With this action, the duties of the provisional committee 

 ended. The first meeting of the permanent committee will be 

 held in Washington in the month of April. 



2. American Report to the International Congress of Geologists 

 at the meeting in Lo?idon commencing September 17, 1888. — This 

 Report, as the title-page states, is made up of "Reports of the 

 American Sub-committees appointed by the American Committee 

 from its own members, assisted by associates, and is "printed by 

 order of the Committee. Editor, Persifor Frazer." It contains 

 valuable papers on American stratigraphical geology prepared 

 chiefly by the Chairmen or " Reporters " of several Sub-com- 

 mittees, and interesting reading as the personal opinions on vari- 

 ous questions, which were gathered in by the assiduous Secre- 

 tary and some of the "Reporters" through epistolary canvassing. 

 But on controverted points it is a " majority" report of the Com- 

 mittee and of its several Sub-committees, and a minority report 

 as regards American geologists. The canvassing gathered opin- 

 ions, but not the final views which free discussion among the 

 geologists of the country would have evoked. Moreover the 

 methods of the Committee tended to suppress discussion even in 

 the Sub-committees. 



The Preface of the published Report states that " all geologists 

 were invited to meet the American Committee in Albany during 

 its session there (April 6th, 1887), in order to aid it in arriving 

 at a correct view of American opinion." Such a call was pub- 

 lished in volume xxxiii of this Journal (1887) ; but the notice of 

 the next meeting at Philadelphia, communicated to the same 

 volume by the Secretary, shows that it failed of the object an- 

 nounced. 



At the only meeting attended by the writer, that of January 

 last at New Haven — not then resuming active membership, as 

 the published Report states in its Preface, but taking my first 

 experience in membership after receiving my first notice that I 

 was a member, the chairman, — Dr. T. Sterry Hunt, opened the 

 session in the morning by announcing that five-minute speeches 

 only would be allowed in discussions, and no replies, thus showing 

 at the outset that full and fair consideration of questions was 

 not to be permitted. 



During the day the reports of some of the Sub-committees were 

 read and passed, but no opportunity was allowed for the discus- 

 sion of any of the propositions to the International Congress 

 which they contained. Before the meeting closed, a vote was 

 passed by which " the Reporters of the Sub-committees respectively 

 were made sole and final judges of the manner in which com- 

 munications received from other geologists should be used." At 

 the same time " the reports on the Archaean, Devonic, Carbonic, 

 Mesozoic and marine Cenozoic " were declared adopted and 

 ready for printing, and those " on the Lower Paleozoic and In- 



