382 H. F. CLELAND THE TEACHING OF HISTORICAL GEOLOGY 



every student, without exception, receive vastly greater benefit from a 

 year's course in physical geology and historical geology, or physiography 

 and historical geology, than from a semester course in physical geology 

 and a second course in physiography, or vice versaf The answer seems 

 obvious. It is to be hoped that every effort will be made by teachers to 

 prevent the present tendency to divorce historical from physical geology. 

 Such a separation would be most unfortunate, because a student who has 

 had physical geology and has not had historical geology has been deprived 

 of a conception of time, of the progress of life, of evolution, of the growth 

 of continents, and of other subjects which every educated man should 

 have. The principal reasons that physical geology and historical geology 

 are not offered as a single-year course in all of our colleges and univer- 

 sities appear to be two: First, historical geology does not draw as large 

 electives as physical geology or physiography, because it is a more difficult 

 subject for the student to acquire ; and, second, most teachers of general 

 geology have had little training in paleontology, and consequently slight 

 this subject for one in which they are more interested. Some of the 

 blame for this shyness of the student in electing historical geology, as 

 has been stated, should be placed on the teachers and text-book writers, 

 who have been making the course too largely a test of memory, and who 

 have been requiring the class to learn a great deal that, for the student 

 who takes the course for its cultural value, is, frankly, not worth his 

 time and effort. Nevertheless, the subject as now taught, with all its 

 imperfections, is well worth the time of any student. We are, I think, 

 passing through a transitional stage, from which the subject will soon 

 emerge as one of the broadest, most valuable, most interesting, and most 

 cultural that will be offered in colleges and universities. 



