502 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION C. 
academic Geology should, I venture to urge, be recognised among teachers by 
giving a more honoured place to economic Geology. 
It was inevitable that until the principles of Geology had been firmly esta: 
blished, the detailed study of their application should have been postponed. Now; 
however, last century’s work on academic Geology enables the dificult problems 
connected with the genesis of metualliferous ores to be investigated with illumi- 
nating, and practically useful results. 
British interest in mining education has therefore been revived. Its history 
has been sadly fitful. Lyell,’ in 1832, deplored the superiority of the Con- 
tinent in this respect, as ‘the art of mining has long been taught in France, 
Germany, and Hungary in scientific institutions established for that purpose,’ 
whereas, he continues (quoting from the prospectus of a School of Mines 
in Cornwall, issued in 1825) ‘our miners have been left to themselves, almost 
without the assistauce of scientific works in the English language, and with- 
out any “School of Mines,” to blunder their own way into a certain degree 
of practical skill. The inconvenience of this want of system in a country where 
so much capital is expended, and often wasted, in mining adventures, has been 
well exposed by an eminent practical miner.’ 
Though the chief British School of Mines made a late start, the brilliant 
originality of its professors soon carried it into the front rank; but in an evil 
day for the Mining School it was united with a Normal School for the Training 
of Teachers, now the Royal College of Science, and that school by its great 
success overwhelmed its older ally. Those interested in economic Geology there- 
fore welcome the recent decision to separate the technical from the educational 
and other courses, while leaving the Schools of Mines and Science sufliciently 
connected for successful co-operation. This policy should give such opportunities 
for the teaching of mining research that we may not always have to confess, as 
at present, that British contributions to mining Geology do not rank as high as 
those made to other branches of our science. 
Regrets are sometimes expressed, and perhaps still more often felt, at the 
tendency in scientific teaching to become more techoical; but 1, for one, do not 
fear evil from any such change. It is possible that the educational conflict of the 
future will be between academic science and technical science, on grounds in 
some respects analogous to those between classics and science during the last 
century. ‘The advocates of the educational value of technical science are not 
inspired by mere impatience with the apparently useless, for they accept the 
principle that the essence of education is method, not matter. Therefore, they 
claim that the methods and principles of science can be better taught by subjects 
which are being used on a large scale in modern industries than by subjects of 
which the interest is still purely theoretical. Those who fear that academic science 
will be neglected if technical science be used in education may be encouraged 
by the brilliant revival of classical research since classics lost its educational 
monopoly, Academic science is even less likely to be neglected. It will always 
have its fascination for those intellectual hermits—shall I not say those saints 
of science ?—who prefer to work for love of knowledge, free from the worrying 
intrusion of the mixed problems and fickle conditiuns of the industrial world; and 
the greater the progress of applied science the more urgent will be its demands 
for help from pure science, and, as a necessary consequence, the wider will be the 
appreciation and the more generous the endowment of scientific research. 
Technical education must be as rigorous as that in academic education, and 
its connection with the fundamental principles must be as intimate. When so 
taught, economic problems provide at least as good a mental training as those 
branches of science which are purely theoretical. If the new Imperial College 
of Science and Technology carry on the mission for which the Geological Society 
was founded a century ago. If it inspire its students to have their delight im 
using past discoveries on the open surface of the earth, so that they may penetrate 
to what is within, then they will gain that sure knowledge of the formation and 
distribution of ores, which is of ever-growing national importance. 
" C. Lyell, Principles of Geology, vol. i., ed. 2 (1832), p. 63. 
