GEOLOGY IN THE SERVICE OF MAN 



By Prof. W. W. Watts, Sc. D., LL. D., F. G. S., F. R. S., 



President of Section C (Geology) of the Britisli A.fsoeiation 



INTRODUCTION 



Although geology in the modern restricted sense of the word is 

 over a century old and possesses a flourishing family of descendant 

 sciences, it is still possible to trace its immediate parentage and an- 

 cestry. The only begetter is unquestionably the mining industry, 

 und it is to the ample exposure of rocks in miaes, their condition 

 and arrangement in the simpler mining districts, and the necessity 

 tor accurate knowledge of these districts with regard to composition, 

 succession, and arrangement, that we owe the earliest detailed knowl^ 

 edge of the earth-crust in certain restricted localities. 



The other parent was of more advanced years, and may be de- 

 scribed as "■ insatiate curiosity " ; the natural instinct for observing 

 and collecting odd and bizarre " rarities " found in excavations or seen 

 in natural rock exposures. These fossils, using the word as then 

 employed and not in the restricted sense now usual, naturally kin- 

 dled interest by reason of their natural beauty, their regularity in 

 shape, their properties, their likeness to, and yet their tantalizing 

 difference from, the appearance of living animals and plants. It 

 was tempting to draw inferences from their occurrence and to ex- 

 plain them either by marvellous operations which fuller understand- 

 mg of nature had not then inhibited, or by means of catastrophic 

 events like those familiar in the Mosaic cosmogony. 



Although much had been observed and thought out by his prede- 

 cessors, it is to Werner that we owe the most successful generaliza- 

 tions in a mineral-bearing district; generalizations which gained a 

 wide influence owing to the enthusiasm and eloquence that attracted 

 students from all over the world and imbued them with the desiie 

 to confirm and spread the master's ideas. To Werner also is due 

 a reaction from the fanciful speculations of preceding periods with 

 which he was so impatient that he proposed to drop the very term 



1 An address delivered before Section C (Geology) of the British Association at Toronto, 

 1924. Reprinted by permission from the (ieologioal Magazine, Vol. LXl, Nov., 1!»24. 



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