C— GEOLOGY 59 



record of achievement of the Geophysical Laboratory in Washington, 

 however, shows what can be done ; and we may hope that a revival of 

 activities in this direction will before long be witnessed in this country. 

 As in every science, not less than in some branches of geology, the results 

 obtained and the facts recorded are a measure of the success of the tech- 

 nique employed. The wide range and varied interests of geology now 

 demand a body of investigators thoroughly trained and conversant with 

 the methods of cognate sciences. How can we ensure the supply of such 

 trained geologists, and how are they to acquire the necessary technique .'' 



Geology in Schools and Universities. 



Students are still attracted to geology by a pure love of the subject, 

 just as they were in the old days of the great amateurs. Were it not for 

 this, the restriction of science in schools to subjects other than geology 

 would long ago have emptied our university class-rooms. It might be 

 urged that geology offered definite opportunities for an attractive career, 

 but this is a fact of which pre-university students and their mentors are 

 even now only vaguely aware. And we should not forget that the value 

 of geology as a cultural subject has frequently been emphasised. For the 

 breadth of view it engenders and the enthusiasm it inspires, it should 

 find a place in the curriculum of every university student (as it used to 

 in the Royal College of Science and still does in at least one American 

 university). 



I may here quote the authority of the Prime Minister, who recently 

 expressed the view that ' if any one of the sciences were selected as the 

 key to all the other sciences — as that which in its subject-matter and its 

 history, the history of its evolution, enforces the true scientific method — 

 geology might be selected as that science. For it touches all the funda- 

 mental sciences ; it teaches the young how things become, how age 

 merges into age, how species merge into species, how generation merges 

 into generation, institution into institution — in short, how to approach 

 that problem of a working and progressive society by making them 

 acquainted with the processes of earth structure and of life lived on that 

 structure.' 



Again, Professor H. E. Armstrong, in one of the wholesome scourgings 

 that he is wont to deliver to the scientific community at not infrequent 

 intervals, rightly declares that the broad culture advocated by Huxley full 

 fifty years ago has not yet come to us. From his own experience, he 

 urges the feasibility and desirability of the study of geology in schools, 

 and would regard it as the only possible foundation of a true geography. 

 I can testify that as a school-subject geology makes an admirable and 

 popular hobby, but it might be inadvisable further to overload an already 

 heavy curriculum by adding it as a regular course of study. As an essential 

 part of his training, we may regard it as highly desirable that the future 

 student of geology should have a working knowledge of elementary 

 chemistry, physics, mathematics and biology. The absence of geology 

 from the school curriculum is not necessarily serious, so long as the formal 

 work imposes no handicap on students who wish to go forward with the 

 subject at the university. In most institutions, however, such a handicap 



