Page:The Journal of geology (IA journalofgeology11893univ).pdf/97

It is the chief function of the national, state and provincial geological surveys to bring forth the great concrete facts relative to the structure and resources of their several fields. Within their special domains they also do an important work in the correlation of structures and formations, in the systematic aggregation of the facts, in the organizing of results, and in the development of the fundamental principles of geological science. To some extent they are permitted to do this beyond their own fields, but in the main the boundaries of these fields are the limits of their coördinations. They therefore leave a great function to be performed by some other agency in the coördination of interstate, international, and intercontinental factors. They are also restrained by their relationships to a somewhat too narrowly utilitarian public from devoting much direct attention to the solution of the deeper and broader problems that constitute the soul of science, though their contributions bear upon these in the most radical and important way. In the primary work of systematic observation, and the development of the immediate conclusions that spring therefrom, these surveys surpass all other agencies in the value of their contributions to the growth of the science, but in the secondary and ulterior work of correlation, in the synthetic aggregation and organization of results, and in the analytical and philosophical treatment of the whole, they need to be supplemented by agencies whose facilities and limitations lie in other lines, agencies whose relations and dependencies are complementary in nature. This secondary and ulterior work, in some degree, has been done by individual master students of systematic and philosophical geology, but to a very great extent it has not been done at all. It is a function which properly falls to universities, if the universities can only rise to