PRKSIDKXTIAf. ADDRESS SKCTIOX ]?. 43 



GEOLOGY IX RI]LATI()X TO MIXIXG. 



By F. P. Mkxxell, F.G.S., M.I.]^r.M. 



F residential Address to Section B, delirered Jul;) 15, 1920. 



The original occupation of most of Scnitli Africa, 

 llliodesia excepted, lias been dne to the pioneer efforts of 

 the farmer, or, more correctly, the pastoralist, rather than 

 the miner. It cannot, however, be gainsaid that there is no 

 country which owes its material advancement in greater 

 degree to its mining- industry. It is difficult to picture what 

 Sovith Africa would be like without its gold and diamond 

 mines and the cities which their wealth has called into being. 

 There may, of course, be some controversy as to whether 

 pastoral simplicity woidd not have resulted in more ideal 

 conditions from the point of view of those economists who 

 follow Ruskin in declining- to regard the income alike of 

 the country and of the individual as the best test of real 

 progress. 



We are not, however, concerned to-day, except indirectly, 

 with the economic or sociological aspects of this question. 

 AVe have met together as students of physical science, and 

 we have to consider the application of the science that we 

 profess to the problems which confront us, which have arisen 

 throug-li conditions that must be reckoned with whether or 

 no they have our concurrence or our approval. 



Personally, though I missed the first pioneer activitj' — 

 the most interesting- period of all — it has been my privilege 

 to follow all the later developments of the country in whose 

 chief town we are holding our Annual Congress. At the time 

 of my arrival I do not think a single dividend had been 

 declared by a Rhodesian company, so that I have seen most 

 of the work of placing the mining- industry on a sound basis. 

 In some of the developments which have taken place I have 

 had an actual share, and in all of them I have taken a close- 

 interest, quite apart from the merely material considerations 

 involved. My province has, in fact, been that of the geologist 

 rather than the mining engineer, and it is from the geological 

 standpoint that I intend to discuss some of the problems 

 AA-hich confront, not only this country, but South Africa as 

 a whole at the present day. 



All thoughtful people will, I think, admit that we are in 

 the throes of a great industrial revolution. I do not refer to 

 the position of labour, but to the larger problems of industrial 

 readjustment which now confront all civilised nations. The 

 conception of England as the workshop of the world, on 

 which Cobden largely based his successful Free Trade cam- 

 paign, can now be seen in its true perspective as constituting 

 a mere passing phase. The great war has undoubtedly done 



