BO WE TEACH GEOLOGY? 43 



zation. Hence the great iinfossiliferons terrenes are unknown ; 

 for example, the non-monntainous regions of the West and South, 

 over which in places one may travel from the Rocky Mountains 

 to the Gulf of Mexico without finding a fossil, a crystal, or a 

 building-stone. 



There is but one geological laboratory, and that is the great out- 

 of-doors ; and no student should learn a fossil or a mineral until 

 he has first studied the landscape and is able to distinguish one 

 stratum with its topographic form from another as strata, and not 

 as fossil beds or chemical compounds. A field-glass and a quiet 

 seat upon a commanding eminence, where the local surroundings 

 can be studied, are worth to the beginner miles of traveling about 

 with hammer and specimen-bag ; and a thorough curiosity aroused 

 as to why one hill is flat, another round, or one stream broad and 

 sluggish while another is narrow and raj^id, is more valuable 

 than a cabinet of curios. An inquiry as to the origin of sediment 

 in a river, whence it came, and what will become of it, will lead 

 to a grander conception of earth-stripping and formation-making 

 than the memorizing of all the specimens in a laboratory. 



It is not my wish to discourage the study of paleontology or 

 petrography, but is it not a serious error to teach these first and 

 geology later ? They are to geology as trigonometry is to mathe- 

 matics, something that follows the fundamental arithmetic and 

 algebra. 



Some one has said that geology begins and ends with the rain- 

 drop. If not literally true, the saying is worthy of consideration ; 

 and if the teacher begins with it, his students will soon be familiar 

 with the grand facts of the erosion and distribution of earth-mat- 

 ter, and the origin of the rock-sheets that make the whole, and 

 the life-history of our earth's great cycles can be read. 



When we lay by our icthyosaurians and useless crystals for 

 advanced study, and teach the ordinary and not the extraordinary 

 features of the earth, geology will be appreciated, and every 

 farmer, every builder of homes, every drinker of water, will learn 

 that upon a knowledge of its simple laws his success depends. 



To the high-school student a knowledge of the structure of 

 the earth is as important as chemistry or foreign languages ; but, 

 until some simple text-book is written dealing with the subject 

 on these lines, it is not to be expected that geology will be gener- 

 ally taught. 



The principal acbievement recorded in Dr. Hugo Zoller's recent explorations 

 in New Guinea consists in the ascent of the Finisterre Mountains to a height of 

 8,700 feet, and the discovery of a still loftier range inland, which appeared to 

 be covered with snow. Comparative vocabularies are given of forty-four lan- 

 guages, most of which were collected by the author himself or under his super- 

 vision. 



