THE PROGRESS OF GEOLOGY DURING THE PERIOD 



1891-1915 



Frank Carney 



In every line of science some very important event may 

 have culminated on a particular day. On the other hand, a 

 twenty-five year interval may pass without recording a contribu- 

 tion of note, even though it were always possible to discern the 

 highest merit ; epoch making discoveries may not be recognized 

 at once. Thus, as we members of the Ohio Academy of Science 

 pass the first twenty-five year period of our history, and ask 

 what has been accomplished in our individual fields of work, the 

 answer may be sedately prosaic. 



Pseudo-geologists. There was a time when one man knew 

 as much as any other man about earth science, and home made 

 geology was the only kind available. The output of this type 

 of revelation has decreased relatively with the increase in the 

 number of trained students, or of men with aptness for inter- 

 preting what they see. Nevertheless the last twenty-five years 

 have recorded some extremely interesting specimens of pseudo- 

 geology. The avenues of publication, which embrace a whole 

 gamut of documents from the privately printed book to the widely 

 read Sunday edition, give publicity to matter which finds no 

 place in the documents of learned societies. Possibly we will 

 always have the naive expounders of geological phenomena, men 

 and women whose names may appear ''often in paragraphs, sel- 

 dom in monographs." 



Pioneers in Geology. It has been the privilege of many of 

 us to know a very few of these survivors from the early days of 

 American geology, the versatile Patriarchs of a frontier stage. 

 This type of teacher knew something of all sides of his study : 

 as a chemist, he interpreted minerals from that point of view ; 



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