NATURE 



537 



THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1907. 



THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON. 

 The History of the Geological Society of Louden. 



By H. B. Woodward. Pp. xx + 336; illustrated. 



(London : The Geological Society, 1907.) Price 



ys. 6d. (to Fellows, 6s.). 



THE history of the Geological Society of London 

 is rich in interest and instruction, as the society 

 is unique in the extent of its influence on the science 

 it was founded to promote. Geology had no chance 

 of a satisfactory beginning, because of its immediate 

 discovery of evidence inconsistent with the Mosaic 

 account of Creation and the universality of Noah's 

 deluge. Thus geology was driven at once into 

 cosmogony, and started where it should have ended, 

 and its immediate encroachment on the domain of 

 dogma involved religious controversies that were not 

 only tiresome, but demoralising. Classical and 

 mediaeval literature both contain some true descrip- 

 tions of geological phenomena, but such observations 

 were too occasional to influence the general trend of 

 thought. The men who wrote the first general geo- 

 logical treatises, from Burnet's " Sacred Theory of 

 the Earth " to Townsend, were essentially theo- 

 logians, who failed owing to their application of 

 spiritual laws to the natural world. The pioneers 

 of geology were not free to choose their own ground 

 and work on it at leisure ; it was their misfortune 

 rather than their fault that their views were often 

 the illogical offspring of observations distorted by a 

 cosmogonic squint. " .\ well-educated geognost " (a 

 term then used as synonymous with geologist), 

 according to Bakewell in 1S13, " has lost the use of 

 his own eyes." 



This method did not suit the British mind, which, 

 in the domain of natural science, preferred facts that 

 could be verified by observation to the uncertain pro- 

 ducts of speculation. Mephistopheles, in Goethe's 

 Faust, speaking as the evil genius of Continental 

 science, sneers at the British respect for first-hand 

 facts : — 



'' .Are Britons here? They travel far to trace 

 Renowned battlefields and waterfalls." 



The founders of British geology believed, above all 

 things, in such field work, and most of them were 

 interested in economic geology and were quite in- 

 different to cosmogony. Their studies were devoted 

 to the distribution of soils, as by Lister in 1684, and 

 the agricultural surveys begun by the Board of 

 -Agriculture in 1794 ; or to mining geology, such as 

 the papers of Strachey of 1719 and 1725 ; while 

 William Smith, engineer and surveyor, deplored 

 '• that the theory of geology was in possession of one 

 class of men, the practice in another." .Applied 

 geology was, however, then of no general interest, 

 and the science was judged by its contributions to 

 cosmogony. It was prejudiced, according to Lyell, 

 by " the imputation of being a dangerous, or at best 

 but a visionary pursuit"; and it was the mission of 

 the Geological Society to reform the methods of 

 geological work so as to remove any justification for 

 NO. 1978, VOL. 76] 



this reputation. Its founders were full of contempt 

 for the vain wranglings between Neptunists and 

 Piutonists, between naturalists and theologians, and 

 it was their ambition to direct geological inquiry into 

 useful channels and secure a foundation of positive 

 knowledge, on which at some future date a geo- 

 logical system could be firmly based. This policy was 

 proclaimed in 181 1, when the society adopted as its 

 motto a passage from Bacon, which recommended 

 toil instead of talk. Its loyalty to this principle was 

 remarked by Fitton in 1817, who, in an account of 

 the societv's transactions in the Edi)iburi;li Review. 

 said that they were limited to the record of " strict 

 experiment or observation, at the expense of all hypo- 

 thesis, or even of moderate theoretical speculation." 

 .According to Lvell, in 1832, the ideal of the founders 

 was " to multiply and record observations, and 

 patiently await the result at some future period . . . ; 

 and it was their favourite maxim that the time was 

 not yet come for a general system of geology, but 

 that all must be content for many years to be ex- 

 clusively engaged in furnishing materials for future 

 generalisations "; and he claimed for the society the 

 credit of brilliant success as the reward of its con- 

 sistency to that principle. 



The Geological Society had two English prede- 

 cessors, the .Askesian Society and the British 

 Mineralogical Society, founded respectively in 1796 

 and 1799, and amalgamated in 1806. The Geological 

 Society dates from November 13, 1807, when a party 

 of eleven men dining at the Freemasons' Tavern, 

 according to one version (the diary of Wm. Allen), 

 "instituted a Geological Society"; but according to 

 another (a letter by Sir H. Davy) they established " a 

 little talking Geological Dining Club." This mis- 

 understanding led to conflict between those who held 

 that the society should be a mere social dining club 

 and should not encroach on the domain of the Royal 

 Society by publication of important scientific work, 

 and those who intended that the society should raise 

 the status and advance the knowledge of geology by 

 a strenuous, progressive policy. Scientific London 

 had to face this problem. Is it better for e.ach science 

 to have its own society, or for all of them to unite 

 into one great institution? Some of the leaders of 

 the Royal Society thought that the inevitable competi- 

 tion and overlap between independent societies would 

 be injurious; they proposed that the Geological 

 Society should become a branch of the Royal Society, 

 which was to have the right to publish in the Philo- 

 sophical Transactions any papers it cared to select 

 from those read before the Geological Society. The 

 geologists, however, considered that scientific pro- 

 gress could best be secured by independent societies 

 working in friendly alliance. Their rejection of the 

 federal policy was probably the wisest course, but it 

 cost them the fellowship of Sir Joseph Banks and 

 Sir Humphry Davy, who resigned as a protest 

 against the alleged trespass on the sphere of the 

 Royal Society. 



The dinner, though part of the original plan, 

 appears to have been always of secondary import- 

 ance, and was soon abandoned to an independent 

 geological dining club. The early meetings, how- 



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