380 THE RELATIONS OF GEOLOGY. 



scheme of imtioiml iiisti'uction kiio^vn as the '■'science iind art <lepavt- 

 ment/' But wliat especially concerns us here is that these results 

 demonstrate, on the one hand, the naturalness and fertility of 

 De la Beche's conception of the necessary association of science, prac- 

 tice, and education and, on the other, the far-reaching" influence that 

 geology and geologists have had on the extension and invigoration of 

 scientific pi-actice and education in Britain. 



GEOLOGY AND ECONOMICS, 



It is almost an im})ertinenc(^ to point out to an assemblage of geolo- 

 gists like this the relationships of geology and its applications to the 

 material welfai'c of our fellow-counti'ymen; but those of us who are 

 absorbed in the charms of research are now and again tempted to look 

 askance at those Avho are engaged in advancing geology and the appli- 

 cations of geology from the side of ci-onomics. Yet for all that ever}" 

 one of us is well aware that geology is bound up body and soul with 

 the develo[)ment of the mineral wealth of our land — that mineral wealth 

 by means of which the enterprise of our people has placed our countiy 

 at the head of tlie manufacturing and connnercial powers of the world. 

 Our science has not only the charge of the working out of all the 

 detailed j)henomena, subterranean and superticial, of the great coal 

 fields and iron-ore fields which lie at the foundation of our conuuercial 

 supremacy iis a nation, but it works out the characters and tixes the 

 places of all the ston}" materials of which our cities and towns are 

 built, our humblest dwellings are constructed, and all our roads and 

 railways are made. It deals with the sources and the quantities and 

 characters of our water supplies, whether deep seated or superticial, 

 the nature and distribution of our soils, and indeed with everything 

 which W'C derive directly from the ground upon which we tread. Thus 

 a know ledge of tiie principles and applications df geology is indispen- 

 sable to the education of the miner, the mine owner, the prospector, the 

 land agent, the land owner, the agriculturist, the civil engineer, and 

 the military engineer. 



GEOLOGY AND MAN. 



It is as true now as it was in the davs A\hen \\'erner tirst drew his 

 far-reaching inferences before his charmed listeners that in the char- 

 acteristic phenomena and varying distribution of the grand mineral 

 masses of the rock formations almost all that concerns the relative 

 habitability of a land depends. Where the hard, intractal)le rock 

 formations rise boldly out we have our mountain regions — our uplands 

 and highlands — wild areas of pasture and scanty populations, it is true, 

 but the lands of refuge and of freedom in the past and of health and 

 holiday in the present. Where the soft, easily weathered rock forma- 

 tions spread out in gentle slopes or })road undulations we have the wide 



