September 4, 1890] 



NA TURE 



455 



accuracy and certainty, and to abate that caution and that 

 wholesome suspicion which make the wary reasoner look well 

 to his foundations, and resolutely refuse to sanction any super- 

 structures, however pleasing to the eye, unless they are firmly 

 and securely based. 



If I am right in thinking that the mental health of the geo- 

 logist of matured experience and full-grown powers is liable to 

 a disorder of the kind 1 have indicated, how much greater must 

 the risk be in the case of a youth, in whom the reasoning faculty 

 is only beginning to be developed, when he approaches the 

 study of geology ! And does it not seem at first sight that that 

 study could scarcely be used with safety as a tool to shape his 

 mind, and so train his bent that he shall never even have a wish 

 to turn aside either to the right hand or to the left from the 

 strait path that leads through the domain of sound logic ? 



That it is hazardous, and that evil may result from an in- 

 cautious use of geology as an educational tool, I entertain no 

 doubt. The same may, indeed, be said of many other subjects, 

 but I feel that it is specially true in the case of geology. But I 

 should be guilty of that very haste in drawing conclusions 

 against which I am raising a warning word, if I therefore 

 inferred that geology can find no place in the educational 

 curriculum. 



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 neutralizing whatever 

 there may be potentially hurtful in the use of geology for educa- 

 tional ends. It has been said that the right way to make a 

 geologist is not to teach him any geology at all to begin with. 

 To send him first into a laboratory, give him a good long spell 

 at observations and measurements requiring the minutest accu- 

 racy, and so saturate his mind with the conception of exactness 

 that nothing shall ever afterwards drive it out. If a plan like this 

 be adopted, it is easy to pick out such kinds of practical work 

 as will not only breed the mental habits aimed at, but will also 

 stand him in good stead when he goes on to his special subject. 

 Goniometrical measurements and quantitative analysis will serve 

 the double purpose of inspiring him with accurate habtt of 

 thought, and helping him to deal with some of the minor 

 problems of geology. And I cannot hold that this practice of 

 paying close attention to minute details will necessarily unfit a 

 man for taking wider sweeps and more comprehensive views 

 later on. That habit comes naturally to every man who has the 

 making of a geologist in him directly he gets into the field. Put 

 such a man where a broad and varied landscape lies before him, 

 teach him how each physical feature is the counterpart of 

 geological structure, and breadth of view springs up a native 

 growth. I do not mean to say that the plan just suggested is 

 the only way of guarding against the risk I have been dwelling 

 upon. There are many others. This will serve as a sample to 

 show what I think ought to be aimed at in designing the 

 geological go-cart. And any such mind-moulding leads, be 

 assured, not to hesitancy and doubt, but to conclusions, reached 

 slowly it may be, but so securely based that they will seldom 

 need reconstruction. 



There is another aspect of the question. The uncertainties 

 with which the road of the geologist are so thickly strewn have 

 an immense educational value, if only we are on our guard 

 against taking them for anything better than they really are. 

 Of those stirring questions which are facing us day by day and 

 hour by hour, none perhaps is of greater moment than the 

 discussion of the value of the evidence on which we base the 

 beliefs that rule our daily life. A roan who is ever dealing with 

 geological evidence and geological conclusionsi and has learned 

 to estimate these at their real value, will carry with him, when he 

 comes to handle the complex problems of morals, politics, and 

 religion, the wariness with which his geological experience has 

 imbued him. 



Now I trust the prospect is brightening. Means have been 

 indicated of guarding against the danger which may attend the 

 use of geology as an educational instrument. Need I say much 

 to an audience of geologists about the immense advantages which 

 our science may claim in this respect ? In its power of cultivating 

 keenness of eye it is unrivalled, for it demands both microscopic 

 accuracy and comprehensive vision. Its calls upon the chastened 

 imagination are no less urgent, for imagination alone is com- 

 petent to devise a scheme which shall link together the mass of 

 isolated observations which field work supplies ; and if, as 

 often happens, the fertile brain devises several possible schemes, 

 it is only where the imaginative faculty has been kept in check 



NO. 1088, VOL. 42] 



by logic that the one scheme that best fits each case will be 

 selected for final adoption. But, above all, geology has its 

 home, not in the laboratory or study, but sub Jove, beneath the 

 open sky ; and its pursuit is inseparably bound up with a love 

 of Nature, and the healthy tone which that love brings alike to 

 body and mind. 



And what does the great prophet of Nature tell us about this 

 love? 



" The boy beholds the light and whence it flows ; 



The man perceives it die away, 



And fade into ihe light of common day." 



Will it not, then, be kind to encourage the boy to follow a 

 pursuit which will keep alive in him a joy which years are too 

 apt to deaden ; and will not the teaching of geology in schools 

 conduce to this end ? Geology certainly should be taught in 

 schools, and for more prosaic reasons, of which the two follow- 

 ing are, perhaps, the most important. Geography is essentially 

 a school subject, and the basis of all geographical teaching is 

 physical geography. This cannot be understood without con- 

 stant reference to certain branches of geology. Again, how 

 many are the points of contact between the history of nations, 

 the distribution and migrations of peoples, and the geological 

 structures of the lands they have dwelt in or marched over. 



But geology is not an easy subject to teach in schools. The 

 geology of the ordinary text-book does not commend itself to 

 the boy-mind. The most neatly-drawn sections, nay, even the 

 most graphic representations of gigantic and uncouth extinct 

 animals, come home to the boy but little, because they are 

 pictures and not things. He wants something that he can 

 handle and pull about ; he does not refuse to use his head, but 

 he likes to have also something that will employ his hands at 

 the same time. 



The kind of geology that boys would take to is outdoor work ; 

 and, of course, where it can be had, nothing better could be 

 given them. A difficulty is that field work takes time and filches 

 away a good deal of the intervals that are devoted to games. 

 Still cross-country rambles and scrambling about quarries and 

 cliffs are not so very different from a paper-chase ; and if the 

 teacher will only infuse into the work enough of the fun and 

 heartiness which come so naturally in the open air, he need not 

 despair of luring even the most high-spirited boy, every now and 

 then, away from cricket and football. 



But there are localities not a few — the Fen country, for 

 instance — where it is scarcely possible to find within manageable 

 distance of the school the kind of field-geology which is within 

 the grasp of a beginner. But even here the teaching need not 

 be wholly from books. The best that can be done in such cases 

 is to make object-lessons indoors its basis. For instance, give a 

 lad a lump of coarsish sandstone ; let him pound it and separate 

 by elutriation the sand grains from the clay ; boil both in acid, 

 and dissolve off the rusty coating that colours them ; ascertain 

 by the microscope that the sand grains are chips and not rounded 

 pellets, and so on. All such points he will delight to worry out 

 for himself; and, when he has done that, an explanation of the 

 way in which the rock was formed will really come home to him. 

 Or it is easy to rig up contrivances innumerable for illustrating 

 the work of denudation. A heap of mixed sand and powdered 

 clay does for the rock denuded ; a watering-can supplies rain ; a 

 trough, deeper at one end than the other, stands for the basin 

 that receives sediment. By such rough apparatus many of the 

 results of denudation and deposition may be closely imitated, 

 and the process is near enough to the making of mud-pies to 

 command the admirationof every boy. It is by means like these 

 that even indoor teaching of geology may be made life-like. 



I need not dwell upon the great facts of physical geology 

 which have so important a bearing on geography and history ; 

 but I would, in passing, just note that these too often admit of 

 experimental illustration, such for instance as the well-known 

 methods of imitating the rock-folding caused by earth-movements, 

 I would add that wherever, in speaking of school teaching, I have 

 used the word "boy," that word must of course be taken to 

 include "girl" as well. 



In conclusion I should like to give you an outline of the kind 

 of course I endeavour to adopt in more advanced teaching in the 

 case of students who are working at other subjects as well, and 

 can give only a part of their time to geology. During the first 

 year the lectures and book-work should deal with physical 

 geology. In the laboratory the student should first make the 

 acquaintance of the commoner rock-forming minerals, the means 

 of recognizing them by physical characters, blowpipe tests, and 



