V. C. Illing—The Search for Oil. 291 



combated rather than avoided, so that the mischief may be curtailed, 

 if not entirely eliminated. 



It is but a few years since the geologist and botanist were 

 popularly regarded as mere dilettantes, dabblers in fossils and plants, 

 harmless individuals with a craze for the useless. The recent 

 problems of agriculture, timber, mineral resources, and water-supply 

 have shown how essential are these sciences in the national 

 economy, and the geologist and botanist have gained an assured 

 place in industry beside the chemist and the physicist. This 

 position implies responsibility of the collective body as well as of 

 the individual, and it is becoming increasingly necessary that the 

 opinion of organized science should be less inarticulate when 

 matters in which it is interested become the subject of public 

 discussion. 



This is especially true of geology, the science directly concerned 

 with the mineral wealth of the country, and no better example of 

 this need can be found than the question recently ♦aised of the 

 possible occurrence of underground oil-pools in Great Britain. The 

 subject is essentially a geological one, and the British School of 

 Geologists holds no uncertain views about the project, yet these views 

 have been completely overshadowed by the insistent utterances of 

 a few individuals. 



Geology is not an exact science. The personal factor looms so 

 large in many of its problems that he must needs be hardy who 

 dares to be positive, and inexperienced who considers his verdict 

 a final solution. The paths of progress in geological thought are 

 strewn with discarded theories, the working hypotheses of the 

 individual in his search for truth. To confuse theory with fact, to 

 pivot an immense industrial undertaking on the transitory opinions 

 of a few individuals, when there is ample opportunity for a wider 

 appeal, is poor policy. The appointment of a representative 

 committee of scientists to discuss and report on the possibilities 

 of finding commercial quantities of crude petroleum in the British 

 Isles should have been a necessary preliminary to the whole 

 undertaking. 



In the maze of involved economic and political interests it is 

 difficult and profitless to follow the drilling scheme from its 

 inception to its adoption. Primarily it was essentially a war 

 measure, a forlorn attempt caused by a desperate need, and to 

 view it in any other light is to rob it of its main excuse for 

 existence. To the geologist, however, the fact which matters is 

 the problem itself, and the ultimate possibilities are sufficiently 

 interesting to need no excuse for being intruded on the notice of 

 the reader. It is obvious that the discovery of large pools of oil 

 and gas in this country would be of great national importance. 

 The mere possibility of success would be ample warrant for the 

 public expenditure, but at the same time the problem should be 

 examined with a calm discussion and judgment of facts to give pause 

 to the wild hopes raised by the utterances of misguided optimism. 



It is not difficult to surmise the main guiding principles which 

 are being adopted in the present search for oil in Britain. The 



