THE GEOLOGIST. 
FEBRUARY 1864. 
WORK FOR THE FIELD-CLUBS. 
By the Editor. 
"Without the slightest wish to interfere with the management, or 
anv desire to criticize the past doings of ]S"atural History Societies 
and Field-Clubs, we may be permitted, without any imputation of 
meddling, to suggest how much good work tlie 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-grauite 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 unconformability 
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 moUusca, 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- 
TOL. YII. G 
