186 RejJorts and Proceedings — Geological Societij of London. 



He then dealt with the relation of geology to its fellow-sciences. 

 Astronomy and geology — one the oldest, the other the youngest 

 of the sciences — have both a comparatively small number of 

 adherents and working members. One suggests to the mind of man 

 ideas of infinity, and the other those of eternity ; but while the 

 former ideas have found ready acceptance, the latter have had to 

 struggle against much reluctance on the part, not only of the average 

 man, but of physicists and mathematicians, and even of geologists 

 themselves, and this in spite of the fact that some of the most fertile 

 principles of geological science have had their spring in a conviction, 

 of the immensity of past time. 



Geology has relations with mineralogy, physics, geography, and 

 biology ; but though fearlessly acknowledging how much it has 

 borrowed from each of these sciences, it can claim that the debt has 

 in every case been repaid with interest. To mineralogy it has given 

 the associations and relations of minerals in the crystalline rocks ;. 

 to biology, the strongest proofs of organic evolution and the stages 

 of its advance ; to geography, the explanation of the origin of the 

 earth's surface- features, and the foundation of the studj' sometimes 

 called ' geomorphology ' ; to physics, the facts with regard to the 

 deformations of the earth's crust, which still await a theoretical 

 explanation. 



The study of geology shows that the corporate geological organism 

 has three necessary functions — research, practice, and education. 

 So long as all three functions are naturally and healthfully per- 

 formed, so long will geology live and flourish. The work and 

 influence of Werner and De la Beche show that the progress of the 

 science is at its swiftest and surest when none of the three functions 

 suffer from disuse. 



In its relations to the thoughts of mankind and ideas of life, what 

 gives character and its especial colour to the science of geology is 

 that it is the exponent, or practically the discoverer, of the idea of 

 continuous evolution, " for he discovers who proves." To a student 

 who has gone through a geological training and appreciated its 

 meaning, the idea of slow and continuous evolution becomes part and 

 parcel of his mental constitution, and he carries this conception into 

 his other studies. In all cases he is on the watch for those 

 simple natural causes that are capable of the present accumulated 

 effects ; he is watching the development of a living being growing 

 up, as it were, before his mental vision. It is therefore to be desired 

 that some knowledge of this kind should reach the ordinary man of 

 education and leisure, as well as the specialist, for it tends to restore 

 the loss of balance due to the self-absorptive and introspective 

 tendency of much of our present-day culture. 



Some such geonomic training or earth-knowledge is essential in 

 any complete scheme of education — at first hardly differentiated into 

 geology and geography, but later passing on to the study of 

 topography, geography, and geology. The training should be in the 

 early stages experimental and practical, bringing out all that can be 

 shown upon maps and learnt from them ; but the didactic side must 



