October 9, 1903.] 



SCIENCE. 



453 



eai-n tlieir bread by the sweat of their brain 

 (ir brow. Many of these have done and are 

 doing: i;ood work for us, and many more 

 would find real pleasure in doing so if only 

 they had been inoculated in those early 

 days when impressions sink deep. Mr. A. 

 S. Reid, who has had much and fruitful 

 experience in teaching, tells me that he has 

 often seen seed planted in barren ground 

 at school spring up and grow and blossom 

 as a country-holiday recreation after school 

 days, or bear the good fruit of solid re- 

 search after lying dormant for many years. 

 We may next look upon geology as an 

 educational medium from quite a different 

 point of view. If more than half the work 

 of the man of science is the collection of 

 fact, and of actual fact as opposed to the 

 i-esult of the personal equation, geology is 

 perhaps the very best training-ground. 

 There are such hosts of facts to be still re- 

 corded, so many erroneous observations to 

 be corrected, and so much hope of extend- 

 ing observations on already recorded facts, 

 that thei'e is plenty of work even for the 

 man who can snatch but limited leisui-e 

 from other pursuits and the one who is a 

 collector of fact and nothing else, as well as 

 those 



■ under whose command 

 Is earth and earth's, and in their hand 

 Is Nature like an open book.' 



But in the collection of facts a wise and 

 careful selection is constantly necessary 

 in order to pick out from the multitude 

 those which are of exceptional value and 

 importance in the construction of hjqioth- 

 e.ses. Nature, it is true, can not lie; she is 

 a perfectly honest but expert witness, and 

 it takes an astonishing amotmt of acute 

 cross-examination to elicit the truth, the 

 whole truth and nothing but the truth. 



There is no science w^hich needs such a 

 variety of observations as field geology. 

 When we remember that Sedgwick and 



Dai'win visited Cwm Glas and carried away 

 no recollection of the features which now 

 shout 'glaciation' to every one who enters 

 the Cwm, it is easy to see how alert must 

 be the eyes and how agile the mind of the 

 man who has to carrj- a dozen problems in 

 his mind at once, and must be on the look- 

 out for evidence with regard to all of them 

 if he would work out the structure of a 

 difficult country; and who is not only look- 

 ing out for facts to test his own hypothesis, 

 but wishes to observe so accurately that if 

 his hypothesis gives way even at the 

 eleventh hour his facts are ready to suggest 

 and test its successor. There is no class of 

 men so w'cU up in what may be called ob- 

 servational natural history generally as the 

 practiced field geologist, because he never 

 Ivnows at what moment some chance obser- 

 vation—a mound, a spring, a flower, a 

 feature, even a rabbit-hole or a shadow — 

 may be of service to him. Not only should 

 he know his country in its every feature 

 and every aspect, but he must have, and 

 in most eases soon acquires, that remarkable 

 instinct, which can only be denoted as an 

 'eye for a country,' with which generally 

 goes a naturalist's Imowledge of its plants 

 and of its birds, beasts and fishes. 



At the present time many educationists 

 are in favor of teaching only the experi- 

 mental sciences to the exclusion of those 

 which collect their facts by observation. 

 This attitude may do some good to geology 

 in compelling us to pay more attention to 

 that side of our science which has been 

 better cultivated hitherto in France than in 

 our own country. But whether we think 

 of education as the equipping of a scien- 

 tific man for his future career or as the 

 training of the mind to encounter the prob- 

 lems of life, we must admit that it would 

 be as wrong to ignore one of the two ways 

 only of collecting fact as it would be to 

 teach deductive reasoning to the exclusion 



