990 The American Naturalist. [October, 
authoritative voices have been raised to proclaim the necessity of one, 
but it is to our eminent colleagues assembled in Philadelphia, in 1876, 
ay all the credit is due.” 
M. Jannettaz, the general secretary, who followed the president, 
remarked: “It is in Buffalo, as the president has just told us, at the 
end of the exposition of Philadelphia, that the savants of diverse 
nationalities, and of a large representation in the history of modern 
geology, agreed to institute the first International Geological Congress ; 
they were of the unanimous opinion that the congress could be held 
in Paris during the continuance of the Exposition Universelle. They 
created in consequence acommittee, to which we in France have given 
the name of the ‘ comité fondateur,’ to recall at once its initiative, and 
the noble American city which was its point of departure ’’ (Paris 
volume, 26, 27). 
Here, then, was the congress fully started, with no further inde 
than the appointment of a committee by the A. A. A. S. for the 
innocent purpose of ‘considering the propriety " of holding one. 
No wonder that the congress regarded the concourse of scientific 
men in Buffalo as its parent, and never once alluded to the American 
Association ; for the latter had never declared whether it considered 
the holding of a congress proper or not. 
M. Jannettaz goes on to say that the secretary of the comité fonda- 
teur, Dr. T. Sterry Hunt, requested M. Tournouér to take the 
measures which he should judge advisable for the success of the idea. 
When the committee of organization was constituted it studied 
carefully the plan presented to it by the comité RER and issued 
circulars to carry out the latter’s wishes as much as possi 
M. Jannettaz asserts that the programme of this session of the con- 
gress was simply an enlargement of the plans of the comité fondateur. 
At the Saratoga meeting of the American Association, in 1879, 
Prof. Hall gave a sketch of the proceedings of the Paris session, and 
** recommended that the committee be continued.’’ At the same time 
Dr. Hunt recommended that the foreign members who had been 
added (Van Baumhauer, Huxley, and Torrell) be released from service 
on the American committee. 
The A. A. A. S. voted both of these propositions. 
It seems clear that there is here a confusion between more than one 
committee, composed of the same persons, it is true, but exercising 
entirely different functions, and existing by virtue of totally distinct 
appointments. First, the A. A. A. S. appointed a committee to in- 
vestigate the propriety of a congress. 
