96 3 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
into service, at Volterra in Italy, a new source of power in the high- 
temperature steam from fumaroles which had previously been used only 
as a source of borax. Now the steam is being tapped by borings adven- 
turously carried out, and its chief heat is employed in running great power 
stations, only the residual heat being given up to the manufacture of borax. 
This may be but the beginning of the application of a new and valuable 
source of power in which the services of geology will be required and from 
which that science stands to"learn much. We are haunted by the fear 
that a limit will be imposed by high temperature to deep mining, while 
that very heat may provide energy as valuable as the material which 
would otherwise be mined ; Hust as we dread the gas from certain coal 
seams when the gas might, if it could be exploited, give a return equivalent 
to that of the coal itself. 
Agriculture and Forestry.—Leaving aside relations already touched 
upon, the connexion of geology with agriculture and forestry is through 
the medium of soils and subsoils, and, though the geologist seems unsuited 
to deal unaided with soils, his methods are those which the soil investigator 
must use; and soil surveys are now being carried out by agriculturists 
working in conjunction with geologists. This results in giving new and 
valuable facts and inferences for the benefit of both sciences. On the 
geological side it is rendering more available the facts of plant distribution, 
and what has been called agronomics, which, speaking for myself, I have 
always found very hard to get hold of. On the other hand, the services of 
geologists are likely to be of especial value in the matter of transported 
soils, loams, loess, brick-earths, drifts, gravels, and the like, where the 
conditions of formation may in many cases provide a key to their 
peculiarities. The same considerations apply to forestry, and here in 
addition well-established facts, such as the successive forest types dis- 
played in peat-bogs, may betray principles that will be of service in 
practice. Questions of site, sewage disposal, and health are bound up 
with questions of water and agriculture and need no further notice here. 
Military Science.—It will be readily admitted that geology has been of 
conspicuous service in connexion with military operations in such ways as 
the siting of camps, trenches, and dug-outs; while the minute study of 
the water-table in northern France during the late war was not only of 
value in obtaining water supplies but was of conspicuous utility in mining 
and counter-mining, in which exact and detailed knowledge was success- 
fully pitted against a knowledge which was ‘ just there or thereabouts.’ 
The ‘ eye for a country,’ the visualising of features plotted on maps 
and making the utmost use of them, qualities on which good strategy is 
founded, are the same qualities which are essential to a competent geological 
surveyor; and I cannot help thinking that strategic ability would reap 
as much advantage from a knowledge of the underlying canons of topo- 
graphic relief as the geologist would from a study of the principles of 
military topography. It was a wise scheme to train the British Home and 
Overseas armies on ground similar in kind and in relief to that on which 
they were about to fight in France ; but it should have been realised that 
physical causes and the resultant topographical relief differ in essential 
particulars in temperate and tropical climates. 
