THE GEOLOGIST. 



FEBRUARY 1864. 



WOEK FOE THE FIELD-CLUBS. 



By the Editor. 



Without the slightest wish to interfere with the management, or 

 any desire to criticize the past doings of Natural History Societies 

 and Field-Clubs, we may be permitted, without any imputation of 

 meddling, to suggest how much good work the forthcoming year may 

 produce, through a little forethought and pre-arrangement. Spring- 

 time will now soon be upon us, and the time for field-excursions will 

 have come on again. Would it not be well if the Councils of So- 

 cieties organized their arrangements with a view to some practical 

 ends ? 



In the districts of crystalline and metamorphic rocks, examples of 

 transitional states bearing on the great origin-of-granite question 

 might be designated as one of the topics of inquiry, and members 

 solicited to search for and study examples, and to send notices of 

 them to the Societies before the excursions were decided upon. In 

 the districts of the Secondary rocks, examples of unconforinability 

 and thinning out, and the intercalation of special deposits, would also 

 form a most valuable subject of inquiry. 



Palaeontology, as such, should not be neglected : and by selecting 

 given genera or families of fish, mammals, or mollusca, and tracing 

 the ranges of species upwards and downwards stratigraphically 

 through the separate beds of the various deposits of any geological 

 formation or formations, the most valuable data for geological pro- 

 gress would be obtained ; and contemporaneously with this investi- 



VOL. VII. O 



