Here is a collection of timely reports which review and assess the state of development of several branches of geochemistry. They serve as well to indicate the contemporary scope, technique, and philosophy of this field of scientific inquiry. Combining as they do both original work and a review of relevant background material they should appeal both to the specialist and to the interested layman.

The papers which comprise this volume were presented at a symposium held as part of the programme of the Royal Society of Canada at McMaster University in 1962, and they were selected with a view to illustrating some of the principal fields of interest, some of the methods of inquiry, and both the limitations and the future potential of geochemical research, rather than to attempt a comprehensive treatment of all fields of geochemistry. All are concerned with analytical, inductive science, and as such are to be considered as classical or Goldschmidtian geochemistry.

An interesting and provocative study in geochemical dialectics is the critical appraisal by K.K. Turekian of the contexts in which trace-element distribution studies can be of value in interpreting past environments or processes. H.G. Thode and R.N. Clayton have contributed a report on stable-isotope abundance variations in nature: President Thode continues his widely-known work in the mechanisms responsible for the fine structure of the natural distribution of sulphur, while Professor Clayton advocates extending the geothermometer, conceived by H.C. Urey for measuring past ocean temperatures, into the range of igneous and metamorphic conditions. Public Health officials as well as geochemists will be interested in the synopsis offered by M. Fleischer and W.O. Robinson of the geochemical distribution of fluorine in the United States. E.H.T. Whitten advocates the use of quantitative methods in interpreting granite terraces, using a powerful statistical approach. G.V. Middleton concludes with a general statement legitimizing the union of statistics and geochemistry, indicating sophisticated statistical procedures which, despite their established use in other inductive sciences, are only just becoming established in geochemistry.