Intcniational Congress of Geologists. — Frazer. 335 
EIGHTH SESSION OF THE I NTERNATIONAL CON- 
GRESS OF GEOLOGISTS, PARIS, 1 900. 
ITS PROCES \-ERBAUX WITH RUNNING COMMENTS. 
Persiror Frazer, Philadelphia. Pa. 
A volume, royal 8vo of 62 pp. has been issued by the 
French ministry of commerce, trade, post and telegraph giv- 
ing- the proces verbaux of the eighth session, held at Paris last 
year from the lOth to the 27th of August. The promptness 
with which all the publications of the last Congress have been 
issued, is an unmistakable indication of the directing power of 
Charles Barrois, the able general secretary. 
After an enumeration of the twenty-five excursions, fol- 
low the more or less formal addresses of the retiring president, 
Karpinski (who was re-called to Russia a few days after- 
wards by a death ) and of the incoming president, Gaudry. 
The announcement by the latter of the deaths of the former 
members of the Council, Lieut. General de Tillo, Hauchecorne, 
Janettaz, James Hall and Marsh seems to have been errone- 
ously printed "since 1878" (the date of the first meeting of the 
Congress in Paris). In point of fact all these eminent men 
appear to have died since the St. Petersburg session of 1897. 
In Barrois' report the happy solution of a difficulty whicli 
threatened the success of these International Congresses is an- 
nounced. It was to organize two sets of excursions, the first 
• open to practically any one who cared to take part, but the 
second restricted to professional and practising geologists. For 
several sessions the local committees have staggered under the 
increasing burden of providing for the transportation and 
maintenance at a minimum price of great numbers of persons, 
chieflv foreigners to the countrv where the session was held, 
who read in the newspapers of the excursions planned for the 
geologists, and determined to profit by them as personally con- 
ducted tours to which the payment of an entrance fee of twen- 
tv-five francs, entitled the payer. This imposition was most 
severely felt at the St. Petersburg session in 1897. 
Six months before the opening of the session, the news- 
papers throughout the world had announced the generous plans 
of the Russian local committee to carry two or three hundred 
members' of the Congress in special trains, steamers, and 
