CONTRIBUTIONS OF GEOLOGY 207 



of an error under circumstances when errors meant loss of 

 human lives. 



As in the case of the French Army, so in most of the other 

 Allied armies geological maps and geological knowledge were 

 utilized locally, sometimes on a very considerable scale, but 

 without any such systematic development of the work as took 

 place in the British Expeditionary Force. On the Italian front 

 I was informed that General Porro, Chief of Staff to General 

 Cadorna, was especially interested in the relation of geological 

 science to military problems, and that he made much use of 

 geology in connection with the important engineering projects 

 undertaken during the Italian offensives in the Trentino and 

 Carso regions. At the time of my visit the Carso front had 

 been lost to the enemy, and General Porro had retired with 

 Cadorna ; so it was not practicable to learn just how much 

 geology had contributed to those great engineering works which 

 preceded all principal attacks on the limestone plateaus beyond 

 the Isonzo. On Mount Grappa and other strategic heights 

 farther west the surface was undermined by a labyrinth of 

 tunnels and galleries cut in solid rock, in the excavation of 

 which the geologist had been called in as adviser. It was an 

 Italian engineer with a geological training who ran the tunnel 

 under Mount Tofana and placed the great mine which blew 

 off the summit of that peak thus destroying a noted Austrian 

 fortress. Geological advice was sought by the Italian Army 

 in connection with its extensive road-building operations, its 

 water-supply problems, and other engineering work. But there 

 was apparently lacking any systematically organized geological 

 corps. 



At the General Headquarters of the Armies at Salonika I 

 found an army engineer having some knowledge of geology, 

 at work on a geological map of the peninsula for military use. 

 This map was largely based on an earlier one by Jovan Cvijic, 

 the well-known Serbian geologist, but contained new informa- 

 tion secured in the course of the military operations. It was 

 designed, however, to show sources of valuable minerals, ma- 



