GEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES 63 Naturforscher und Aă rzte (1822) Each year since 1831, with some interruptions during the two world wars, the ‘B.A.’, or the ‘British Ass’, has held its annual peripatetic gatherings in cities throughout the British Isles and in Commonwealth locations such as Montreal (1884), Toronto (1897, 1924), South Africa (1905, 1929), Winnipeg (1909), and Australia (1914) The Geological Section – today Section C – of the Association has always been one of the most important, successful, and popular of the Association’s numerous sections The geological societies named so far have all been bodies dedicated to the earth sciences in general, but since the middle decades of the nineteenth century, increasing specialization within the earth sciences has encouraged the development of a new generation of societies dedicated to just one field within the earth sciences In Britain, the earliest of these more narrowly focused societies was the small London Clay Club, established in 1838 for the collection, description, and illustration of the local Eocene mollusca Considerably more important is the Palaeontographical Society, founded following a meeting of the Geological Society of London held on February 1847, and dedicated to the publication of monographs devoted to British fossils Other specialized British bodies founded within the field of the earth sciences include the Mineralogical Society (1876), the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy (1892), the Institution of Petroleum Technologists (1913), the Palaeontological Association (1957), the British Geomorphological Research Group (1961), the British Micropalaeontological Society (1970), and the Geological Curator’s Group (1974) Within the Geological Society of London there are now specialist groups, of which the following organizations serve as a sample: the British Geophysical Association, the British Sedimentological Research Group, the Environmental and Industrial Geophysics Group, the Geochemistry Group, the Geological Remote Sensing Group, the Geoscience Information Group, the Hydrogeological Group, the Marine Studies Group, the Metamorphic Studies Group, the Petroleum Group, the Tectonic Studies Group, and the Volcanic and Magmatic Studies Group The Quarterly Journal of Engineering Geology (now the Quarterly Journal of Engineering Geology and Hydrogeology) has been published by the Geological Society since September 1967 During the past 150 years, the pattern of geological society foundation, evident in Britain since 1807, has been mirrored the world over as the global population of earth scientists has undergone dramatic expansion The increasing interest in higher education, the growth of the hydrocarbon industry, the bourgeoning demand for industrial minerals, the incessant call for building materials, and the world’s never-to-be-assuaged thirst for water have all proved to be the detonators of a geological population explosion It has been an explosion such as could never have been imagined by those 11 founders of the Geological Society of London who dined together at the Freemasons’ Tavern on 13 November 1807 In six continents, thousands of geologists have combined within the convenient and comfortable ambiance of geological societies There geologists have sought intellectual companionship, there they have relished the inspiration of a geological milieu, there, for their research discoveries, they have found both fora for discussion and channels for communication, and there, by their labours, they have earned for their science that public prestige and influence that comes from nicely modulated collective activity Further, in recent years, large numbers of enthusiastic amateurs have been attracted into geological societies Never since the furore surrounding Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859) have the earth sciences attracted as much attention as is theirs today Plate collision, mass extinction, Jurassic Park, Creationist claims, lunar rocks, Martian images – these have all served as eye-catching billboards for geology As a result, internationally, droves of amateurs have joined the ranks of the world’s geological societies, there to make absorbing contact with a fundamental element of the human environment The Republic of Ireland has a population of only 3.9 million people, but it affords a microcosm of the type of recent institutional development that has characterized geology throughout the world The Royal Geological Society of Ireland, dating back to 1831, died in 1894, partly as a result of the completion of the primary geological survey of Ireland in 1890, and partly as a result of the collapse of the small Irish mining industry as new and more profitable mines were opened overseas With the second half of the twentieth century came revival The Irish Mining and Quarrying Society was established in 1958 for those involved in the renewed and expanded extractive industries The Irish Geological Association was launched in 1959 to offer a regular programme of events of interest to both the professional and the amateur The Irish Association for Economic Geology was founded in 1973 to serve all those with a professional involvement in the economic aspects of the earth sciences In 1978, there was founded a new journal, the Journal of Earth Sciences Royal Dublin Society (today the Irish Journal of Earth Sciences of the Royal Irish Academy) The Cork Geological Association was born in 1992 out of the enthusiasm of some Cork citizens