Suggestions on the Practical Utility of a Combination of Geological Societies

Abstract

We all know that whatever we do to do well we must do earnestly. It is not a thing taken in hand now and then, by fits and starts, that ever reaches the perfection necessary to give it prominence and raise it above things ordinary.A London society, simply because it is a London society, is not therefore composed of more talent than a provincial society; nor, if it be, is that talent necessarily more effectually applied than it would be by any other society whatever. But as the metropolis is the centre and focus of the English ordinary population, so we think its learned societies ought to be the centres and foci of all the provincial societies. By this we do not advocate that the London societies should at all control the actions of any of the other societies; but we can not but think that the greatest good would arise from a combination of all the provincial Geological Societies and Field Clubs with that which ought to be their natural head—the London Geologists' Association. If the Geological Society itself could be made the great centre of attraction, so much the better; but the exclusive nature of that institution, and the antique system upon which its laws and regulations are founded, seem to prohibit, at least, for the present, any hope of its giving that invaluable help which it has all the materials in its hands for doing.