300 PROCEEDINGS OF THE OHIO ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



he was a zoologist to the extent of knowing fossil forms as anal- 

 ogies or prototypes of living animals ; he was a physiographer 

 in recognizing the salient relationships between rock texture and 

 structure and land forms ; he was a geomorphologist because 

 expected to account for the grosser anatomy of the continents; 

 he was a meteorologist since at that time no one else in the 

 village communities or on the college faculties was thought to 

 bear a closer relationship to the mysteries of the air ; he was an 

 anthropologist because fossils, hence all antiquities, belonged to 

 his domain ; and the public decreed that he was also an . anti- 

 quarian. These men were promethean encyclopedias of facts, 

 inspiring teachers, illuminating but unrecompensed prophets 

 whose real compensation is the host of workers begot by their 

 enthusiasm. 



The sons of these pioneers, as is usual with the second gen- 

 eration, did not give disappointment by evincing greater wisdom 

 than the fathers, and their grandsons feel no chagrin in not know- 

 ing completely any one of the numerous fields w'hich the grand- 

 sires cultivated thoroughly. Thus has geology evolved special- 

 ists. 



A comparison of the courses offered today and in the year 

 1890 by the Departments of Geology in our colleges and univer- 

 sities shows the results of specialization. No longer can the 

 student listen to lectures on minerals, and movmtain development, 

 and mining, and paleontology, and petrography, given by the 

 same man. The most modestly equipped university now has at 

 least three groups in its geology courses ; the more fully eriuipped 

 have five or six groups. The tendency augurs further subdivi- 

 sion. It is not so long since the department of mineralogy did 

 the work of the petrographer, but now our petrographers are 

 splitting into several particular fields. In this subdivision of its 

 work, geology and the other sciences accord with modern in- 

 dustry ; and in the most highly organized industrial plants, the 

 best machine does automatically just one thing. Possibly in the 

 years to come, when all the little parcels of investigation have 

 been thoroughly analyzed, the generations will begin to produce 

 synthetically an end product that may bear some semblance to 

 the pioneer in geology. 



