Geology in Education and Practical Life. 435 



Another reason is the open-airness of the practice of the science. 

 The delight of the open country comes with intense relief after 

 the classroom, the laboratory, or the workshop. In education 

 generally, and especially in geological education, we have reached 

 the end of the period when 



" All roads lead to Rome 

 Or books — the refuge »f the destitute."" 



Of course> I realise fully the vital necessity of laboratory and 

 museum work in the stages of both learning and investigation, and 

 quite freely admit that there is an immense amount of useful work 

 being done and to be done in these institutions alone. But what 

 I think I do right to insist upon is that all work in the laboratory 

 and museum must be mainly preparatory to the field-work which 

 is to follow ; every type of geological student must be sent into the 

 field sooner or later, and in most cases the sooner the better. 

 I have generally found that students in the early stages have a great 

 repugnance to the grind of working through countless varieties of 

 minerals, rocks, and fossils; but once they have gone into the fiield, 

 collected with their own hands, and seen the importance of these 

 things, and the inferences to be drawn, from them, for themselves — 

 once indeed they have got keen — they come back willingly, eveui 

 eagerly, to any amount of hard indoor work. 



But it is when they leave ordinary excursion work and start upon 

 regular field training that one really feels them spurt forward. As 

 soon as they begin to realise that surface-features are only the reflex, 

 of rock-structure and can be utilised for mapping, that to check 

 their lines and initiate new ones they must search for and find new 

 exposures, and that each observation, while settling perhaps one 

 disputed point, may originate a host of new ones, when, above all, 

 they can be trusted with a certain amount of individual responsibility 

 and given a definite point to settle for themselves, it is then that 

 their progress is most rapid, and is bounded only by their powers of 

 endurance. 



I have often watched my students through the various stages- of 

 their field training with the deepest interest as a study of the 

 development of character. At first they look upon it merely as 

 a relief from the tedium of the classroom and laboratory, and as 

 a pleasant country excursion. But gradually the fascination of 

 research comes over them, and as they feel their capacity increasing; 

 and their grip and insight into the structure of the country deepening, 

 one can see them growing up under one's^ eyes. They come into the 

 field a rabble of larky boys ; they begin to develop into men before 

 they leave it. 



And what is true of students is more than ever true of the working; 

 geologist. I hold that every geologist, whatever his special branch 

 may be, should spend a portion of every year in the field. Though 

 a petrologist may have specimens sent to him from every variety, 

 even the common ones, in a rock-mass, and have their relations and 

 proportions properly explained to him, it is q^uite impossible for him. 



