problem with some urgency. Covering the industrial and social aspects of the Earth sciences also poses problems but for a quite different reason, which is that we have not found it particularly easy to persuade busy people in the industrial and government sectors to contribute. Nevertheless, we intend to step up our efforts in this direction and with some hope of suc- cess, not least because the call for more attention to be given to applied matters was made particularly by the industriaYgovernment geologists themselves, albeit with strong support from students (with an eye to the future?) and other groups.

Academic geologists tended to express their wishes more specifically, requesting articles on, among other things, hydrogeology, earthquake prediction, sur- veying, sources of geological data, map-making, iso- topes, geochronology, metamorphic petrology, computer graphics and analytical methods. We are grateful for these suggestions and hope to take up as many of them as possible over coming months. From school teachers, however, we would welcome more detailed proposals. Not a few teachers seem to feel, without being specific enough in their comments, that coverage of more topics on the A-level syllabuses would be useful. We would like to invite teachers to contact us again with possible subjects (and, if they can, with the names of potential authors) so that we can examine the feasibility of making a greater con- tribution to A-level studies.

Some teachers also expressed the view that some (too many?) of our articles tend to go over the heads of extra-mural-class members and A-level students. Surprisingly, perhaps, very few amateur geologists made that precise criticism, although they were more critical of the book reviews, especially those of the more expensive books (a view shared by some retired geologists). We have a particular problem with book reviews, having space to cover only a very small fraction of the books published even if each review is kept to no more than a few hundred words. There is probably no solution to this, although in

future we might help matters by concentrating more on the ‘popular’1generaVundergraduate end of the market.

Amateur geologists also want more help with practical matters such as fossil preparation, mineraY rock identification and guidance on field methods. We hope to follow up some of these suggestions, whilst acknowledging that we probably don’t have the space to go too far in that direction and wondering if some of the topics (field methods, for example) aren’t already covered adequately in existing textbooks. One thing we can do more or less immediately, however, is to take up an idea put forward by one amateur geologist - that readers should be able to ask authors for publishable replies to follow-up questions on their articles. We therefore look forward to someone starting this off, the only proviso being that questions (and answers) should be reasonably short.

Of the 617 responses analysed statistically, 87 came from 26 countries outside Britain. As might be expected, some of those readers expressed a wish for rather less coverage of UK affairs, although, contra- dictorily, others welcomed Geology Today as a means of keeping up with what is going on here. We extended our international coverage in 1988, but we nevertheless invite our foreign readers to help us do even better in this sphere by letting us know what is happening in the Earth sciences in their own countries.

Finally, without wishing to appear too self- congratulatory, we are greatly encouraged by the large number of people who wrote in suggesting that the magazine is fine as it is (‘Keep it up lads, it’s a good comic’ was the way one reader put it) and that there should be no radical departures from a successful formula. May we reassure these friends by saying that we plan no sudden and violent changes in policy. Nevertheless, we must evolve; and we are grateful to those who took the trouble to complete the quesrion- naire and have thus helped us to decide in which direction to go.

. ..

‘The 1988 Geologicrll Photography Competition prizegiving T h e 1988 pliorogi-:ipIi y conipct i t i o i i was I c‘lclirat rcl at a lunchlime rcxq)ritjii on 2. 1)ecenilxr 10XX at the Gcoltr~:ic;il Mii\cuin, t o which t h c lour prizewinners a i d rlic tliree cornpetitor<; with ‘highly cormnerirled’ enrrics and their p:irtncrs were invited to ~C:CL‘IVC their clit:ques 1’1-om John Evans, Prcsidtwt ol’ the Grolopsrs’ A:;sociatiori, which generously g:ivtt the prizes rotallirig E 3 0 0 . Several orlicr geologisrs, scicrrce editors ;ind writers were a lso invitt-ii to atlend and rnect those of us involved in rhe publisluiig uf (;eolo,(y 7’oduy. Members of r h r rnaguine’s Managenicrit Conunittee arid its liditorial Hoard were also present.

rrilded i n the 1)irecior’s (:on- ference Kooni, IJrdes,sor Alec Smith, Ch.iirman of

: the Managenlent (:omnittee, welcoitied I he visitors and gave a short progress report on ( ;PO~OW

Toduy, including the news that the magmine t i x i

been awarded the Charlesworth Group Award lor hical Excellence in Journal and Serial

___ ~

48lGEOLOGY TODAY March-April 1989