Frazer on Int. Cong, of Geologists. 99 , 
cursion. On the reassembling of the Section in the evening 
major Powell withdrew his amendment and the resolution was,, 
unanimously carried. 
Sixth meeting of the American coffzmittee. 
After the adjournment of the Section a sixth meeting of the 
American committee was held on August 15th, 1887, in 
Columbia College, at which routine business was transacted. 
Before this is put into type a seventh meeting of the Amein- 
can Committee will have been held in New Haven. 
The question which most concerns American geologists is, 
what attitude they propose to assume toward the body of their 
own creation. A Congress of experts from every country on 
the globe assembled to clear away the confusion arising from 
misuse of terms, synonymy, and local prejudices, and thus to., 
facilitate the jDrogress of science, is a distinctively nineteenth 
century idea. Not that it originated with the gentlemen who. 
called this geological Congress into being; for the experiment 
had been tried on numerous occasions before; but no science 
needed such assistance more than geology, which is peculiarly 
liable to death by drowning at the hands of any one who is, 
provided with a few terms, the physical power to walk over the 
country in his own neighborhood, and an ambition to be seen 
in print. Unlike astronomy, and physics, and mechanics and 
chemistry, which are removed from the touch of the idly pro- 
fane by the expensive tools required to prosecute them (the 
first three being also additionally guarded behind the strong 
wall of mathematics) geology requires a properly trained imag- 
ination if its disciple would rise above the level of a mere col- 
lector. Instead of this it is but too frequently treated to an 
imagination without safeguards, a commodity which not only 
invalidates conclusions made in its name but even vitiates its 
supposed facts. A single statement distorted, whether acci- 
dental through ignorance, or purposed through a desire of 
notoriety, concerning a phenomenon which cannot be again ob-„ 
served, may act for years as a bar to a consistent theory of a 
group of facts in which it ought to be one component. How 
vitally important then that the individual errors of working 
such a science, the parallax of national or bureau vanity, the. 
