Geology in Education and Practical Life. 439 



become part of the common stock of the knowledge of the world ; 

 indeed, they are not even fully realised by many men eminent in 

 their own sciences. The momentum given by Werner and Playfair, 

 Phillips and Jukes, Sedgwick and Lyell, and other pioneers of the 

 fighting science, has died down, and in the interval of har-d work, 

 detailed observation, minute subdivision, involved classification, and 

 pedantic nomenclature which has followed, and which I believe to 

 be only the prelude to an epoch of more important generalisation in 

 the immediate future, it has been difficult for an outsider to see the 

 wood for the trees. He has hardly yet realised that facts as vital to 

 the social and economic well-being of the people at large, and con- 

 clusions of as great importance in the progress of the science and of 

 as far-reaching consequence in the allied sciences, are being wrung 

 from Nature now as in the past. 



" The unimaginable touch of Time," the antiquity of the globe as 

 the abode of life, the absolute proof of the evolution of life given by 

 fossils, the proofs of change and evolution in geography and climate, 

 the antiquity of man, the nature of the earth's interior, the tremendous 

 cumulative effect of small causes, the definite position of deposits of 

 economic value, the role played by denudation and earth-movement 

 in the development of landscape, the view of the earth as a living 

 organism with the heyday of its youth, its maturity, and its future 

 old age and death, to mention but a few of our great principles, 

 furnish us with conceptions which cannot fail to quicken the 

 attention and inspire the thought of students of history, geography, 

 and other sciences. 



Now that these things are capable of definite proof, that they are 

 of real significance in the cognate sciences, and of actual economic 

 value, above all now that the nineteenth century, the geological 

 century, has closed, that the heroic age is over, that we have passed 

 the stages of scepticism and religious intolerance and reached the 

 stage " when everybody knew it before," it might be expected that 

 a fairly accurate knowledge and appreciation of these principles 

 should form part of the common stock of knowledge, and be a 

 starting-point in the teaching of allied sciences. 



Another feature which adds to the attractiveness of geological 

 observations is their immediate usefulness from many points of 

 view. The relief and outline of any area is as closely related to its 

 rocky framework as the form of a human being is related to his 

 skeleton and muscles. The geological surveyor recognises how 

 every rise and fall is the direct reflex of some corresponding 

 difference in the underlying rocks ; he seeks to observe and explain 

 the ordinary as well as anomalous ground features, every one of 

 which conveys some meaning to him. 



A geological basis for the classification and grouping of surface- 

 features is the only one which is likely to be satisfactory in the end, 

 because it is the only one founded on a definite natural principle, 

 the relation of cause to effect. It is not without good reason that 

 the topographic and geological surveys of the United States ara 



