TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION C [ 647 



mander-in-Chief would have had no cause of complaint -with regard to these par- 

 ticular men. Looking: at a map is one thing ; working at it, seeing into it, and 

 getting out of it what is wanted from the Tast mass of information crammed into 

 it, is qiiite another ; and Geology is the very hest and perhaps the only means of 

 compelling such a close study of maps as to enahle students to seize upon the saUent 

 features of a country from a map as quickly and accurately as if the country itself 

 were spread out before them. The geologist is compelled to work out and classify 

 for himself the features he observes on his maps, such as scarps and terraces, crags 

 and waterfalls, streams and gorges, passes and ridges, the run of the roads, canals, 

 and railways, the nature and accessibility of the coast, and all those features which 

 make the ditlerence between easy-going and a difficult country. When he has 

 worked his way over a map in this fashion that map becomes to him a real and 

 telling picture of the country itself. 



Experience, bitter experience, in South Africa has shown the necessity not only 

 for good maps and map-reading, but for that which is the most priceless posses- 

 sion alike of the best stratigraphers and of the best strategists, a good ' eye for a 

 country.' It has been said l^hat the Boer war was a geographical war ; but it was 

 even more, and, especially in its later stages, a topographic war. Again and again 

 the Boers aroused our astonishment and admiration by the way in which their 

 topographic knowledge and instinct enabled them to fight, to defend themselves, 

 and to secure their retreat, by the most consummate ability in utilising the natural 

 features of their country. This was due to two things. In the first place they 

 took care to have with them in each part of the country the men who knew that 

 particular district best in every detail and in every aspect. But in the second 

 place there can be no doubt that they made the utmost use of that hunter-craft by 

 which the majority of them could take in at a glance the character of a country, 

 even a new one, as a whole, guided by certain unconscious principles which each 

 man absorbed as part of his country life and hunter's training. They possessed, 

 and had of necessity cultivated to a very high degree, an 'eye for a country.' 



Now the study of the geology of any district, and especially the geological 

 mapping of it, goes a long way towards giving and educating the very kind of eye 

 for a coimtry which is required, partly by reason of the practice in observation 

 and interpretation which it is continuously giving, and partjy because it delibe- 

 rately supplies the very kinds of classification and the principles of form which a 

 hunter-people have unconsciously built up from their outdoor experience. 



Any geologist who thinks of the Weald, the wolds and downs of Eastern 

 England, the scarps and terraces of the Pennine, the buried mountain structure 

 of the Midlands, even the complicated mountain types of Lakeland and Wales, 

 will remember how often his general Imowledge of the rock-structure of the region 

 has helped him as a guide to the topography ; and as his geological knowledge of 

 the area has increased he will recall how easy it has become to carry the most com- 

 plicated topography in his mind, or to revive his recollection of it from a glance 

 at the map, because the geological structure, the anatomy, is present in his mind 

 througliout, and the outside form is the inevitable consequence of that structure. 

 Indeed the reading of a good geological map to the geologist is like the reading of 

 score to a musician. 



Surely it would be most unwise if the Committee on Military Education were 

 to cut out of their curriculum the only subject which has exercised and educated 

 this faculty, and one which is at the same time doing a great deal to counteract that 

 degeneration of observing faculties inseparable from a town life. Some cadets at 

 least ought to be chosen from amongst those men who have been trained by this 

 method to see quickly and accurately into the topographic character and possibilities 

 of a country, and provision should be made for educating their faculties further 

 until they become of genuine strategic value. 



Then I believe it would be correct to say that no class of men get to know 

 their own district with anything like the minuteness and accuracy of the geological 

 surveyor. The mere topographer simply transfers his impressions on the spot as 

 quickly as may be to paper, and has no further concern with them. The geologist 

 must keep them stored in his mind, watching the variation and development of 



