Reports and Proceedings — Prof. Green's Address. 477 



other subjects, but I feel that it is specially true in the case of geology. But I 

 should be guilty of that very haste in drawing conclusions against which I am 

 raising a warning word, if 1 therefore inferred that geology can find no place iu 

 the educational curriculum. 



To be forewarned is a proverbial safeguard, and those wbo are alive to danger 

 will cast about for a means of guarding against it. And there are many ways of 

 neutralising whatever there may be potentially hurtful in the use of geology for 

 educational ends. It has been said that tbe right way to make a geologist is not 

 to teach him any geology at all to begin with. To send him first into a laboratory, 

 give him a good long spell at observations and measurements requiring the minutest 

 accuracy, and so saturate his mind with the conception of exactness that nothing 

 shall ever afterwards drive it out. If a plan like tbis be adopted, it is easy to pick 

 out such kinds of practical work as will not only breed the mental habits aimed at, 

 but will also stand him in good stead when he goes on to his special subject. Gonio- 

 metrical measurements and quantitative analysis will serve the double purpose of 

 inspiring him with accurate habits of thought, and helping him to deal with some 

 of the minor problems of geology. And I cannot hold that this practice of paying 

 close attention to minute details will necessarily unfit a man for taking wider 

 sweeps and more comprehensive views later on. That habit comes naturally to 

 every man who has the making of a geologist in him directly he gets into the field. 

 Put such a man where a broad and varied landscape lies before him, teach him how 

 each physical feature is the counterpart of geological structure, and breadth of view 

 springs up a native growth. I do not mean to say that the plan just suggested is 

 the only way of guarding against the risk I have been dwelling upon. There are 

 many others. This will serve as a sample to show what I think ought to be aimed 

 at in designing the geological go-cart. And any such mind-moulding leads, be 

 assured, not to hesitancy and doubt, but to conclusions, reached slowly it may be, 

 but so securely based that they will seldom need reconstruction. 



There is another aspect of the question. The uncertainties with which the road 

 of the geologist are so thickly strewn have an immense educational value, if only 

 we are on our guard against taking them for anything better than they really are. 

 Of those stirring questions which are facing us day by day and hour by hour, none 

 perhaps is of greater moment thau the discussion of the value of the evidence on 

 which we base the beliefs that rule our daily life. A man who is ever dealing 

 with geological evidence and geological conclusions, and has learned to estimate 

 these at their real value, will carry with him, when he comes to handle the complex 

 problems of morals, politics, and religion, the wariness with which his geological 

 experience had imbued him. 



Now I trust the prospect is brightening. Means have been indicated of guarding 

 against the danger which may attend the use of geology as an educational instrument. 

 Need I say much to an audience of geologists about the immense advantages which 

 our science may claim in this respect ? In its power of cultivating keenness of eye 

 it is unrivalled, for it demands both microscopic accuracy and comprehensive vision. 

 Its calls upon the chastened imagination are no less urgent, for imagination alone 

 is competent to devise a scheme which shall link together the mass of isolated 

 observations which field work supplies ; and if, as often happens, the fertile brain 

 devises several possible schemes, it is only where the imaginative faculty has been 

 kept in check by logic that the one scheme that best fits each case will be selected 

 for final adoption. But, above all, geology has its home, not in the laboratory or 

 study, but sub Jove, beneath the open sky ; and its pursuit is inseparably bound up 

 with a love of Nature, and the healthy tone which that love brings alike to body 

 and mind. 



And what does the great prophet of Nature tell us about this love ? 



The boy beholds the light and whence it flows ; 



The man perceives it die away, 



And fade into the light of common day. 



"Will it not then be kind to encourage the boy to follow a pursuit which will 

 keep alive in him a joy which years are too apt to deaden ; and will not the 

 teaching of geology in schools conduce to this end ? Geology certainly should be 

 taught in schools, and for more prosaic reasons, of which the two following are 

 perhaps the most important. Geography is essentially a school subject, and the 

 basis of all geographical teaching is physical geography. This cannot be understood 



