456 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. VOL.XVIII. No. 458. 



pelled this small group of candidates to 

 see deeper into a map than ordinary people. 

 If only this training had been encouraged 

 and advanced and made use of later, the 

 commander-in-chief would have had no 

 cause of complaint with regard to these 

 particular men. Looking at a map is one 

 thing; working at it, seeing into it and 

 getting out of it what is wanted from the 

 vast mass of information crammed into it, 

 is quite another; and geology is the very 

 best and perhaps the only means of com- 

 pelling such a close study of maps as 

 to enable students to seize upon the salient 

 features of a country from a map as 

 quickly and accurately as if the country 

 itself were spread out before them. The 

 geologist is compelled to work out and 

 classify for himself the features he 

 observes on his maps, such as scarps and 

 terraces, crags and waterfalls, streams and 

 gorges, passes and ridges, the run of the 

 roads, canals and railways, the nature and 

 accessibility of the coast, and all those 

 features which make the difference between 

 easy-going and difficult country. When he 

 has worked his way over a map in this 

 fashion that map becomes to him a real and 

 telling picture of the country itself. 



Experience, bitter experience, in South 

 Africa has shown the necessity not only 

 for good maps and map-reading, but for 

 that which is the most priceless possession 

 alike of the best field geologists and of the 

 best strategists, a good ' eye for a country. ' 

 It has been said that the Boer war was a 

 geographical war; but it was even more, 

 and, especially in its later stages, a topo- 

 graphic war. Again and again the Boers 

 aroused our astonislunent and admiration 

 by the way in which their topographic 

 knowledge and instinct enabled them to 

 fight, to defend themselves and to secure 

 their retreat by the most consummate 

 ability in utilizing the natural features of 



their country. This was due to two things. 

 In the first place they took care to have 

 with them in each part of the country the 

 men who knew that particular district best 

 in every detail and in every aspect. But 

 in the second place there can be no doubt 

 that they made the utmost use of that 

 hunter-craft by which the majority of them 

 could take in at a glance the character of 

 a country, even a new one, as a whole, 

 guided by certain unconscious principles 

 which each man absorbed as part of his 

 country life and himter's training. They 

 possessed, and had of necessity cultivated 

 to a very high degree, an 'eye for a 

 country. ' 



Now the study of the geology of any dis- 

 trict, and especially the geological mapping 

 of it, goes a long way towards giving and 

 educating the very kind of eye for a 

 country which is required, partly by reason 

 of the practice in observation and inter- 

 pretation which it is continuously giving, 

 and partly because it deliberately supplies 

 the very kinds of classification and the 

 principles of form which a hunter-people 

 have unconsciously built up from their 

 outdoor experience. 



Any geologist who thinks of the Weald, 

 the wolds and downs of eastern England, 

 the scarps and terraces of the Pennine, the 

 buried mountain structure of the Mid- 

 lands, even the complicated mountain types 

 of Lakeland and Wales, wiU remember how 

 often his general knowledge of the rock 

 structure of the region has helped him as 

 a guide to the topography; and as his 

 geological knowledge of the area has in- 

 creased he will recall how easy it has be- 

 come to carry the most complicated topog- 

 raphy in his mind, or to revive his recol- 

 lection of it from a glance at the map, 

 because the geological structure, the 

 anatomy, is present in his mind throughout, 

 and the outside form is the inevitable con- 



