34:6 The Americcm Geologist. May, 1867 
to come to Russia and to take part in the excursions; there is, indeed,- 
every reason to believe that this number will be exceeded. If, in addi- 
tion, others desirous of traveling;: in Russia at a minimum expense come 
to join these, the committee will find it impf>ssible to organize, in a sat- 
isfactory manner, the excursions for the geologists for whose exclusive 
profit the Russian government has made great sacrifices. For these 
reasons the Committee of Organization finds itself, with regret, obliged 
to anntmnce that from now on, all those persons who are not known to 
it by geological works, in case of their having sent the membership fee 
to the treasurer, may be inscribed as members of the Congress, but can 
not profit by the advantages accorded, we repeat, to geologists solely. 
In the name of the general Committee of Organization. 
The Bureau. 
A. Karpinsky, President, 
Th. Tschernyschew, General Secretarij. 
REVIEW OF RECENT GEOLOGICAL 
LITERATURE. 
The Geology of Minnesota, 1892-1896. Vol. Ill, Part II, pp. 475- 
1081 of the Final Report, 4to. Paleontology. By Edward O. Ulrich, 
John M. Clarke, Wilbur H. Scofield, Newton H. Winchell; (The 
Geological and Natural History Survey of Minnesota, N. H. Winchell, 
State Geologist, Issued February, 1897.) 
Perhaps at no time in the history of palaeontology has there been such 
rapid changes in its nomenclature and terminology as at present. For 
nearly fifty years, the classic reports of the veteran palaeontologist, 
James Hall, state geologist of New York, together with the tenerable 
writings of Billings and Salter in Canada, as regards the Lower Siluri- 
an palfeontology, especially, have proved quite sufficient for all the prac- 
tical purposes of general geology and stratigraphy. But now that pal- 
;eozoology or palseobiology are sciences as exacting as their sister sci- 
ences, it seems quite necessary to go deeper into the functional relations 
of the various characters as exhibited by the fossil organic remains and 
present a classification which can better receive the species created 
during the past fifty years and render them more intelligible. For ex- 
ample: the genera Spirifera, Strojjhomena, Orthis, Murchisonia, Me- 
toptoma, and Pleurotomaria, each stood as the head of an exceedingly 
large army of species which, with as perfect material as the museums 
of America can now afford, ought to show such characters as would 
lead to a sub-division of these genera into sah genera, at least, if indeed 
we cannot say quite positively that the newly constituted sub-generic 
designation of Hall and Clarke, and Beecher, and Winchell and Schu- 
chert, and Ulrich and others are truly of generic importance. 
One fact remains, and that is, that everywhere in the animal kingdom 
whether in Recent biological studies, or in paliBontology, we ought to 
