[Annals N. Y. Academy of Sciences, Vol. XX, No. 8, Part III, pp. 365-384. 



23 February, 1911.] 



LIBRARY 

 NEW YORK 



GEOLOGY AND ECONOMICS BOTaMICaL 



UAKDEN. 



By James F. Kemp 



Presidential Address, read at the Annual Meeting of the Ncic York 

 Academy of Sciences, December 19, 1910 



During the century which has just closed, the various branches of 

 natural science, botany, zoology, geology and their relatives, having earlier 

 completed their childhood, attained to the well-rounded development of 

 maturity. Their broad truths were given clear expression; they were 

 widely apprehended, and they became the foundations of various inven- 

 tions and applications of far-reaching influence upon human welfare. 

 Geology, although closely bound up with agriculture, has, nevertheless, 

 been especially concerned with mining. And justly so, because its con- 

 tributions to the art of mining have been no more than a filial return, 

 since mining as practised in the middle ages was the parent of geology. 

 Until recent years, geology's services to the industry have been chiefly 

 rendered in spreading sound and reasonable ideas regarding the nature 

 and distribution of the useful minerals; in solving the perplexing struc- 

 tural questions affecting their occurrence, and in facilitating the discovery 

 of new fields. 



The problems of the production of the metals and non-metalliferous 

 substances, as we know them to-day, are of quite recent growtli. High 

 explosives, efficient engines and pumps, steam shovels and the like are all 

 not so old as many men who are still living. They have so greatly re- 

 duced costs that practically a new world has opened to the miner. Not 

 only on the surface or near it has he been able to work, but the depths 

 have become accessible, and where the value of the ore justified the effort, 

 no floods of water have sufficed to keep him out. 



These successes, coupled with ever-expanding markets, have until re- 

 cently directed attention almost wholly toward discovery and production. 

 But the last ten years have brought a further change. We are now less 

 concerned about new discoveries than about the maintenance of old ones. 

 We are not altogether intent on production, but are much given to fore- 

 casting and husbanding. From being solely an aid to the miner, the 



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