THE 



GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE. 



NEW SERIES. DECADE IV. VOL. X. 



So. X.— OCTOBER, 1903. 



OE,IC3-II<rj^L ^^K,TIOLES. 



I. — The Functions of Geology in Education and Practical Life-. 



By Professor W. W. "Watts, M.A., M.Sc, etc., etc., President of the 

 Geological Section.^ 



AT the Leeds Meeting of the British Association in 1890, my old 

 friend Professor A. H. Green delivered an address to the 

 Section which has generally been regarded as expressing an opinioQ 

 adverse to the use of the science of geology as an educational agent. 

 Some of the expressions used by him, if taken alone, certainly seem 

 to bear out this interpretation. For instance, he says : " Geologists 

 are in danger of becoming loose reasoners " ; further he says : 

 "I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that when geology is to be 

 used as a means of education there are certain attendant risks that 

 need to be carefully and watchfully guarded against." Then he 

 adds : " Inferences based on such incomplete and shaky foundations 

 must necessarily be largely hypothetical." 



Such expressions, falling from an accomplished mathematician 

 and one who was such an eminent field geologist as Professor 

 Green, the author of some of the most trustworthy and most useful 

 of the Geological Survey meraoii's, and above all one of the clearest 

 of our teachers and the writer of the best and most eminently 

 practical textbook on physical geology in this or any other 

 language, naturally exercised great influence on contemporary 

 thought. And I should be as unwise as I am certainly rash in 

 endeavouring to controvert them but for the fact that I think he 

 only half believed his own words. He remarks that " to be fore- 

 warned is a proverbial safeguard, and those who are alive to a 

 danger will cast about for a means of guarding against it. And 

 there are many ways of neutralising whatever there may be poten- 

 tially harmful in the use of geology for educational ends." 



After thus himself answering what is in reality his main indict- 

 ment. Professor Green proceeds with the rest of an address 



1 British Association for the Advancement of Science, Southport, Sept. 9-16, 1903. 

 Adcbess to the Geological Section. 



DECADE IV. — VOL. X. NO. X. 28 



