brooks: applied geology 37 



than applied geology, but it was in the latter that geology really 

 had the support of the American people. One far-reaching influ- 

 ence on the development of applied geology in the early part of 

 the last century was the scarcity of mining engineers or experi- 

 enced operators, while the vocation of prospecting was almost 

 non-existent. Our mining industry was in the early stages and 

 there were almost no engineers and but few so-called practical 

 men to whom the people could turn for information. In European 

 countries, on the other hand, centuries of mining had developed 

 a class of professional men other than geologists who were con- 

 sidered authorities on mineral wealth. But in our own country 

 it was the scientist rather than the engineer or the practical miner 

 who was called upon for information. This not only led to the 

 utilization of science in the preliminary work of seeking mineral 

 deposits, but also had the effect of forcing the scientists to give 

 their investigations a practical turn. 



Either from choice or necessity, the early American geologists, 

 like their successors of today, always emphasized in their work the 

 needs of the community. McClure devoted much of the brief 

 text which accompanied his geologic map of the eastern United 

 States to the relation of geology to agriculture. Eaton's first 

 work bore on the resources of the region adjacent to the Erie 

 Canal. Rodgers elucidated the structure of the coal fields, while 

 Jackson attempted a classification of the public lands of the State 

 of Maine. 



I venture the opinion that one reason why the investigators of 

 this continent have accomplished so much for the advancement of 

 geology is that their research has never been entirely divorced 

 from the field of applied science. We have had no distinct schools 

 of pure and applied geology, as there were until recently in other 

 lands. In Europe there was the practical school of the miner, 

 whose scientific conception seldom reached beyond his immediate 

 environment; and there was the school of the scholar, whose 

 angle of vision was apt to be too wide to focus on facts near at 

 hand. There were, indeed, some exceptions, for the scholar 

 Agricola learned from the miner; Werner's teaching was, in theory 

 at least, an application of geology to the mineral industry; and 



