ON THE INTERNATIONAL GEOLOGICAL CONGRESS, WITH 
SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE LONDON MEETING IN 1888. 
By John Hopkinson, E.L.S., E.G.S. 
(Read before the Hertfordshire Natural History Society , 8 th May, 1888.,/ 
In the early days of geological research, the geologists of each 
country worked independently, giving to groups of rocks names 
derived from the localities in which they were first found or where 
they were most largely developed in their own country, or naming 
them from peculiarities in the beds which frequently were only of 
local value. In geological maps, also, colours and signs have been 
adopted by each country, even in their national surveys, without 
any regard to the practice in other countries, and maps are coloured 
even in the same country on different systems. 
The result of this independent working is that strata of the 
same geological age are known in different countries under names 
which have no relation to each other, and that a geological map 
frequently conveys no idea of the structure and age of the rocks of 
the country to which it refers without a careful study of its index 
of signs and scale of colours. 
In our own country less inconvenience has perhaps been felt 
from this state of things than in others. In geological research 
Britain has always been to the fore. We have, in a small area, an 
epitome of the geology of Europe, and indeed of the world, such 
as no other country can show, and many names which have 
originated with us are now cosmopolitan, while we have adopted 
into our nomenclature only a very few names first given in other 
countries. There is, therefore, some foundation for the adoption of 
uniform names or equivalent expressions, regard being had to the 
language of the different countries; but very little, indeed scarcely 
any, progress has yet been made towards the adoption of uniform 
colours and signs for geological maps. 
Eor the discussion and determination of these and other questions 
of international geological importance the International Geological 
Congress was inaugurated. At the Buffalo meeting of the American 
Association for the Advancement of Science, which followed the 
Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876, a number of geologists 
of various nations met and nominated a Committee to make arrange¬ 
ments for an International Geological Congress to be held at Paris 
in 1878, with the special object of deciding upon rules for the 
construction of geological maps, and for geological nomenclature 
and classification. 
