40 Harker : Petrology in Yorkshire. 



the fact that no fewer than five of our committees of research 

 are appropriated to geology, while nine suffice for the needs 

 of all the other sections together. 



Taking now the comprehensive view thus indicated of the 

 geological activities of the Union, we find that these cover a 

 wide range of interests. Almost every branch of pr?t.tical 

 geology is embraced, though all branches have not received 

 equal attention. That in which our record Ijas least to show 

 is undoubted!}^ Petrology ; and this observation applies to 

 Presidential Addresses no less than to more formal contribu- 

 tions. Not a few distinguished geologists, connected by birth or 

 by their labours with Yorkshire, have filled the place which 

 to-day I have the honour to occupy, but to find a petrologist 

 in the Chair of the Union we must go back more than thirty 

 years. In 1878-9 the President was Henry Chfton Sorb3^ of 

 Sheffield, justly regarded as the father of the modern school 

 of microscopical petrology ; and I feel a peculiar pleasure in 

 being thus even distantly associated with one to whom, though 

 I never saw him in the flesh, I have always looked up as to a 

 master. 



There is, it would appear, a very prevalent belief, though one 

 resting, I venture to think, on shght foundation, that petrology 

 is a study for specialists ; that it offers little opportunity 

 to a man who is isolated from fellow-workers, and can bring 

 to it perhaps only the scanty leisure of a professional or business 

 life. It would be easy to show, on the contrary, that we owe 

 to amateurs some of the most valuable pieces of research and 

 some of the most fertile suggestions in this branch of geology. 

 The disabilities glanced at may be more than outweighed by 

 freedom from conventional and professional trammels, a 

 fresher view-point, and, assuming a local subject to be chosen, 

 the opportunity of exhaustive study, such as no alien can 

 command. It is, I think, a mistake to assume that increasing 

 specialisation in science has widened the difference between the 

 professional and the amateur status. As new lines of research 

 have multiplied, the points of contact between them have be- 

 come more numerous. So, if the actual province of the specialist 

 tends to become narrower, his collateral interests tend rather 

 to widen ; and, in the course even of his special work, he is 

 frequently led on to ground where his footing is strictly that 

 of an amateur. In this very real sense, as well as in the etymo- 

 logical sense, every votary of science must be an amateur, 

 and it is on this common ground that I have the privilege of 

 meeting my fellow-members of the Union. 



Again, I have sometimes heard it urged that Yorkshire 

 does not afford an advantageous field for the petrologist, in 

 view of the poverty of igneous rocks within our borders. Such 

 a complaint savours almost of disrespect to the memory of 



