72 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



place as part of the whole edifice of the science. Without this also he 

 may fail to recognise the distinction between the methods and the purpose 

 of research. Yet this breadth of outlook is not easily come by. On the 

 one hand, it involves the acquisition of a certain modicum of first-hand 

 knowledge of minerals, rocks and fossils as entities, and as they occur in 

 the field ; on the other hand, it demands wide reading. It is the diffi- 

 culties of the latter that I wish to stress. At the very beginning the recruit 

 is confronted by half a dozen or more aspects of the science — -petrology, 

 palaeontology, tectonics, seismology, and so on — each a regular and com- 

 plex study of its own, and yet all wanted for the proper understanding of 

 the whole. The textbooks on each subject, in so far as they exist, have 

 generally been designed for the use of the specialist rather than to show 

 the beginner what place that branch occupies within the framework of 

 our science. He is perhaps advised to supplement his textbook by reading 

 recent papers. These he finds are in various languages and scattered 

 through a number of journals that are rarely to be found in any ordinary 

 library. Though it is no doubt salutary for a man at an early stage to go 

 to some of the original sources, there is a limit to the time available ; and 

 we must also be sure that he can find the treasure we send him to look for 

 among all the lumber it is hidden away with. 



It seems to me that one of the crying needs of the day is for up-to-date 

 books on each aspect of geology. It has been said, I believe, that every 

 textbook is out of date before it is printed. Certainly knowledge is always 

 increasing and interpretation always changing ; but surely each of the 

 sections of geology has now been sufficiently explored for the leaders in 

 that particular branch to be able to distinguish and segregate the essen- 

 tials, so far as we know them, and to present them with a reasoned digest 

 of the evidence as the present-day outlook on the subject. Were this 

 done, one of the greatest of the beginner's needs would be supplied, for 

 he would have access to the main results so far achieved for that special 

 science. Such books would be a boon not only for the beginners, but for 

 the researchers and specialists in other branches, and I venture to predict 

 for the workers in other sciences, and even for our friend the ' man-in- 

 the-street.' 



The books I have in mind would not be the so-called ' popular intro- 

 ductions to geology,' but small textbooks, each dealing with the attain- 

 ments of some section of the subject and written in language that should 

 be understandable by any intelligent person who has had a good school 

 education. A natural and very necessary sequel would be attempts to 

 correlate the results of all the branches, and to show how they unite to 

 give an idea of the present state of geology as a whole. These would be 

 general treatises written from various angles, and would therefore demon- 

 strate the multiplicity of the lines of approach, the recognition of which 

 might well induce a man to take an active part in some section who is at 

 present daunted by the magnitude of the whole. 



Having unburdened myself of these remarks to which I have been 

 impelled by a haunting fear that with the next generation we may no 

 longer see men devoting themselves to our science for the love of it, I will 

 turn to the main theme of my address, The Pleistocene History of the 



