482 



NATURE 



[September 17, 1903 



There is still a third reason, that this meeting is in many 

 respects a geological meeting. A palaeobotanist is presiding 

 over Section K, and the Council has invited, for the first 

 time for many years, one geologist to deliver an evening 

 discourse and another to give the address to artisans. I 

 nfeed hardly say that we are all looking forward to the 

 lectures of Dr. Rowe and Dr. Flett with keen anticipation. 

 To the one for his successful use of new methods of 

 developing fossils and his scientific employment of the 

 material thus prepared in stratigraphic research ; to the 

 other for his prompt, daring, and businesslike expedition 

 to the scene of recent volcanic activity in the West Indies, 

 during which he and his colleague, Dr. Tempest Anderson, 

 collected so many important facts and brought away so 

 much new knowledge of the mechanism of that disastrous 

 and exceptional volcanic outbreak. 



The Functions of Geology in Education and in Practical 

 Life. 



At the meeting in 1890, at Leeds, my old friend Prof. 

 A. H. Green delivered an address to the Section which has 

 generally been regarded as expressing an opinion adverse 

 to the use of the Science of Geology as an educational 

 agent. Some of the expressions used by him, if taken 

 alone, certainly seem to bear out this interpretation. For 

 instance, he says : " Geologists are in danger of becoming 

 loose reasoners " ; further he says : " I cannot shut my eyes 

 to the fact that when Geology is to be used as a means 

 of education there are certain attendant risks that need to 

 be carefully and watchfully guarded against." Then he 

 adds : " Inferences based on such incomplete and shaky 

 foundations must necessarily be largely hypothetical." 



Such expressions, falling from an accomplished mathe- 

 matician and one who was such an eminent field geologist 

 as Prof. Green, the author of some of the most trustworthy 

 and most useful of the Geological Survey Memoirs, and 

 above all one of the clearest of our teachers and the writer 

 of the best and most eminently practical text-book on 

 Physical Geology in this or any other language, naturally 

 exercised great influence on contemporary thought. And 

 I should be as unwise as I am certainly rash in endeavour- 

 ing to controvert them but for the fact that I think he only 

 half believed his own words. He remarks that " to be 

 forewarned is a proverbial safeguard, and those who are 

 alive to a danger will cast about for a means of guarding 

 against it. And there are many ways of neutralising what- 

 ever there may be potentially harmful in the use of Geology 

 for educational ends." 



After thus himself answering what is in reality his main 

 indictment. Prof. Green proceeds with the rest of an address 

 crammed full of ^uch valuable hints as could only fall 

 from an experienced and practical teacher, showing how 

 much could be done if the science were only properly taught. 



And then he concludes by asking for " that kindly and 

 genial criticism with which the brotherhood of the hammer 

 are wont to welcome attempts to strengthen the corner- 

 stones and widen the domain of the science we love so 

 well." 



I think the time has now come to speak with greater 

 confidence, and, although the distance signal stands at 

 danger, to forge ahead slowly but surely, keeping our eyes 

 open for all the risks of the road, with one hand on the 

 brakes and the other on the driving gear, secure at least 

 in the confidence that Nature, unlike man, never switches 

 a down train on to the up track. 



Those of us who have been teaching our science for any 

 considerable time have come to realise that there are many 

 reasons why Geology should be more widely taught than 

 at present ; that there are many types of mind to whom 

 this science appeals as no other' one does ; and that there 

 are abundant places and frequent circumstances which allow 

 of the teaching of it when other sciences are unsuitable. 



To begin with, there is no science in which the materials 

 for elementary teaching are so common, so cheap, and 

 everywhere so accessible. Nor is there any science which 

 touches so quickly the earliest and most elementary interests. 

 It was for this reason that Huxley built his new science 

 of Physiography on a geological basis. Hills, plains, 

 valleys, crags, quarries, cuttings, are attractive to every 

 boy and girl, and always rouse intelligent curiosity and 



NO. 1768, VOL. 68] 



frequent inquiry ; and although the questions asked are 

 difficult to answer in full, a keen teacher can soon set his 

 children to hunt for fossils or structures which will give 

 them part of the information they seek. Of course the 

 teaching cannot go very far without simple laboratory and 

 museum accommodation, and without a small expenditure 

 on maps and sections ; but the former of these requirements 

 can soon be supplied from the chemical laboratory and by 

 the collection of the students themselves, while the latter 

 are every day becoming cheaper and more accessible and 

 useful. The bicycle and the camera, too, are providing 

 new teaching material and methods, while at the same 

 time they are giving new interests. The bicycle has already 

 begun to create a generation to whom relief maps are not 

 an altogether sealed book, and for whom the laws which 

 govern the relief of a country are rapidly finding practical 

 utility ; and the camera, at the same time that it quickens 

 the appreciation of natural beauty, must give new interest 

 to each scrap of knowledge as to the causes, whether 

 botanical or geological, to which that beauty is due. And 

 it is this new knowledge which in turn develops tlie aesthetic 

 sense. Mente, manu, et malleo sums up most of what is 

 required in the early stages of learning ; but to round off 

 the motto we still require words to express the camera and 

 bicycle. 



Another reason is the open-airness of the practice of the 

 science. The delight of the open country comes with in- 

 tense relief after the classroom, the laboratory, or the work- 

 shop. In education generally, and especially in geological 

 education, we have reached the end of the period when 



" all roads lead to Rome 

 Or books — the refuge of the destitute." 



Of course I realise fully the vital necessity of laboratory 

 and museum work in the stages of both learning and in- 

 vestigation, and quite freely admit that there is an immense 

 amount of useful work being done and to be done in these 

 institutions alone. But what I think I do right to insist 

 upon is that all work in the laboratory and museum must 

 be mainly preparatory to the field-work which is to follow ; 

 every type of geological student must be sent into the field 

 sooner or later, and in most cases the sooner the better. 

 I have generally found that students in the early stages 

 have a great repugnance to the grind of working through 

 countless varieties of minerals, rocks, and fossils ; but once 

 they have gone into the field, collected with their own 

 hands, and seen the importance of these things, and the 

 inferences to be drawn from them, for themselves — once 

 indeed they have got keen — they come back willingly, 

 even eagerly, to any amount of hard indoor work. 



But it is when they leave ordinary excursion work and 

 start upon regular field training that one really feels them 

 spurt forward. As soon as they begin to realise that sur- 

 face-features are only the reflex of rock-structure and can 

 be utilised for mapping, that to check their lines and 

 initiate new ones they must search for and find new ex- 

 posures, and that each observation while settling perhaps 

 one disputed point may originate a host of new ones, when 

 above all they can be trusted with a certain amount of 

 individual responsibility and given a definite point to settle 

 for themselves, it is then that "their progress is most rapid, 

 and is bounded only by their powers of endurance. 



I have often watched my students through the various 

 stages of their field training with the deepest interest as 

 a study of the development of character. At first they look 

 upon it merely as a relief from the tedium of the classroom 

 and laboratory, and as a pleasant country excursion. But 

 gradually the fascination of research comes over them, and 

 as they feel their capacity increasing and their grip and 

 insight into the structure of the country deepening, one 

 can see them growing up under one's eyes. They come 

 into the field a rabble of larky boys ; they begin to develop 

 into men before they leave it. 



And what is true of students is more than ever true of 

 the working geologist. I hold that every geologist, what- 

 ever his special branch may be, should spend a portion of 

 every year in the field. Though a petrologist may have 

 specimens sent to him from every variety, even the common 

 ones, in a rock mass, and have their relations and pro- 

 portions properly explained to him, it is quite impossible for 



