442 Professor W. W. Watts— 



and accuracy of the geological surveyor. The mere topographer 

 simply transfers his impressions on the spot as quickly as may be 

 to paper, and has no further concern with them. The geologist 

 must keep them stored in his mind, watching the variation and 

 development of each feature from point to point for his own purposes. 

 He must traverse every inch of his ground, he must know where 

 he can climb each mountain and ford every brook, where there are 

 quarries or roads, springs or flats ; what can be seen from every 

 point of view, how the habitability or habitations vary from point 

 to point ; in short, he must become a veritable walking map of his 

 own district. Why not scatter such men in every quarter of the 

 globe, particularly where any trouble is likely to arise? They are 

 cheap enough, they will waste no time, and they will be so glad 

 of the chance for research that they will not be hard to satisfy in 

 the matter of pay and equipment. Thus you will acquire a corps 

 of guides, ready wherever and whenever they are wanted ; and 

 when trouble arises they may do a great deal by means of their 

 minute knowledge of topography to save millions of money and 

 thousands of lives, and to prevent the irritating recurrence of the 

 kind of disaster with which we have become sadly familiar within 

 the last five years. 



In dealing with the relationship of geology to geography, geologists 

 are frequently charged with claiming too much. On this point at 

 least, however, there can be no difference of opinion, that the 

 majority of geological surveyors and unofficial investigators have 

 kept their eyes open to this relationship, and have often contributed 

 new explanations to old problems. They have been compelled to 

 observe, and often to explain, surface-features before making use 

 of them in their own mapping, and in doing so have often hit upon 

 new principles. It is hardly needful to mention such examples 

 as Ramsay's great conception of plains of marine denudation, 

 Whitaker's convincing memoir on subaerial denudation, Jukes's 

 explanation of the laws of river adjustment, Gilbert's scientific essay 

 on erosion, Heim's demonstration of the share taken by earth-move- 

 ment in the modelling of landscape features, and the exceedingly 

 valuable proofs of the relation of human settlement and movement 

 to underground structure, worked out with such skill and diligence 

 by Topley in his masterly memoir on the Weald — the jumping-off 

 place, if I may so term it, of the new geography. 



No one is more pleased than geologists that geographers have 

 ceased to draw their knowledge of causation solely from history, 

 and that they have turned their attention to the dependence and 

 reaction of mankind on nature as well. But while hoping that 

 geogi'aphers will continue to study, so far as they logically can, 

 the relationshipof plants, animals, and mankind to the solid frame- 

 work of the globe on which they live, we must draw the line at 

 the invention of new geological hypotheses to explain geographic 

 difficulties on no better evidence than that fui'nished by the 

 difficulties themselves ; on the other hand, we must insist that each 



