SECTION C.—GEOLOGY. 
GEOLOGY IN THE SERVICE OF MAN. 
ADDRESS BY 
PROFESSOR W. W. WATTS, Sc.D., M.8c., LL.D., V.P.G.S., F.R.S., 
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION. 
Introduction. 
AttHouex Geology in the modern restricted sense of the word is over a 
century old, and possesses a flourishing family of descendant sciences, it is 
still possible to trace its immediate parentage and ancestry. The only 
begetter is unquestionably the mining industry, and it is to the ample 
exposure of rocks in mines, their condition and arrangement in the simpler 
mining districts, and the necessity for accurate knowledge of these districts 
with regard to composition, succession, and arrangement, that we owe the 
earliest detailed knowledge of the earth-crust in certain restricted localities. 
The other parent was of more advanced years, and may be described 
as ‘insatiate curiosity ’: the natural instinct for observing and collecting 
odd and bizarre ‘ rarities’ found in excavations or seen in natural rock 
exposures. These fossils, using the word as then employed and not in the 
restricted sense now usual, naturally kindled interest by reason of their 
natural beauty, their regularity in shape, their properties, their likeness to, 
and yet their tantalising difierence from, the appearance of living animals 
and plants. It was tempting to draw inferences from their occurrence and 
to explain them either by marvellous operations which fuller understanding 
of Nature had not then inhibited, or by means of catastrophic events like 
those familiar in the Mosaic cosmogony. 
Although much had been observed and thought out by his predecessors, 
it is to Werner that we owe the most successful generalisations in a mineral- 
bearing district ; generalisations which gained a wide influence owing to 
the enthusiasm and eloquence that attracted students from all over the 
world and imbued them with the desire to confirm and spread the Master’s 
ideas. To Werner also is due a reaction from the fanciful speculations 
of preceding periods, with which he was so impatient that he proposed to 
drop the very term Geology and to substitute his own word * Geognosy ’ 
for it, a word intended by him to separate the knowable from the unknown. 
Probably there would have been less controversy between Neptunists 
and Plutonists had Werner committed more of his work to writing, and 
not left us dependent on his pupils for their versions of his views. But 
it is a curious fact, and one probably not dissociated from a geologist’s 
- devotion to field study, that many of those who have made great advances 
have either disliked the act of writing or have been unfortunate in the 
style of their written work. It will be sufficient to couple with Werner 
in this respect such names as William Smith, Sedgwick, and even Hutton, 
not to mention those of more recent geologists. It has not been from 
Smith alone that views and conclusions have had to be extracted, almost 
by force, and committed to writing by faithful devotees. 
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