4 o 



students in geology, mining, or engineering, and those delivered 

 to more popular audiences at afternoon or evening classes. The 

 first group were very systematic and comprehensive, and in addition 

 to covering the ordinary routine work they gave special attention to 

 economic work and to the fitting of students to take part in geological 

 investigation. The economic geology classes were instinct with 

 reality, and the students, many of whom, though trained as 

 engineers or mining men, have found opportunities for geological 

 investigation, felt that their teacher was intimately acquainted, 

 as indeed he was, from personal work, with the tectonics of the 

 Midlands and its bearing on the winning of the coal-seams and on 

 the water supplies of the area. They were shown the relation 

 of geological structure and outcrop to the location of industries 

 .and habitation, and the bearing of the natural ' distribution 

 of mineral resources on history, economics, and agriculture. 

 A new departure was made in teaching advanced students what 

 lie called ' Structural Geology/ in preparation for field-mapping. 

 This work was very thorough, an attempt being made by Lapworth 

 to give to his students some of his own unequalled power of 

 understanding and visualising the geometry of underground 

 structures. Each class was followed up by a field day in 

 some selected area Dudley in one year, Rowley, Nuneaton, or 

 elsewhere in another, when each student was trained in making 

 -geological observations, recording them in his map and notebook, 

 and afterwards, partly in class and partly independently, in working 

 out a completed six-inch map of the selected area. One of the 

 things which gave Lapworth the greater pleasure in his local dis- 

 coveries was his delight in seeing his students discover them anew 

 (generally with his judicious suggestion or prompting), and one 

 might almost think that this furnishes a reason in some cases for 

 lack of haste in publication. 



The ' popular ' classes for the most part took some of the 

 simpler branches of geology or geography or something which 

 combined the two things ; but in some years more difficult subjects, 

 such as problems of geophysics or geomorphology or tectonics 

 were tackled, illuminated by wide reading and personal observation, 

 and yet made sufficiently simple for the audience to follow if they 

 were prepared for a certain amount of intellectual effort. 



All these lectures, whether regular or occasional, were carefully 

 prepared and well thought out, but it was no uncommon thing 

 for the Professor to strike some new vein of thought in the course 

 of the lecture itself, and then he would lay aside his notes and 

 plunge into the discussion and illustration of the new problem in 

 all its intricate bearings. Thus his students were not only impressed 

 with the living and dynamic aspect of the science he taught, and 

 with its rapid and continuous growth, but they felt themselves 



