﻿February 28th, 1905.] PROCEEDINGS. xxxi 



'not so much as an individual, but as a more or less 

 ' average representative of the British geologist in general. 



11 Our science of geology is many-sided, and its votaries 

 ' are of many kinds. It owes its advance not only to the 

 • so-called professional geologist, but almost as much to the 

 'so-called amateur. Its progress is due to the student 

 'quite as much as to the teacher, and to the heterodox in 

 'geological opinion quite as much as to the orthodox; to 

 'the man carrying into practice its economic applications 

 ' as to the man absorbed in theoretical geology ; and, I am 

 ' bound to confess, to the outsider (versed in other sciences) 

 ' almost as much as to the insider. 



" The formal teacher of geological science may very pro- 

 ' perly pride himself upon the fact that in his lectures and 

 ' his laboratories are instilled into the student the accepted 

 ' principles and practice of the science ; but it is to the 

 'enthusiastic student himself — the man who remains a 

 ' learner all his life — that our science looks most hopefully 

 ' for its advance, and never looks in vain. 



"To the staunchly orthodox professor of geology, conser- 

 1 vative of the authoritative and the accepted, and naturally 

 ' suspicious of novelty, we owe the dignity and stability of 

 'our science and the wide influence it has gained in the 

 ' worlds of philosophy and practice. But our science owes 

 ' perhaps quite as much to men whose training, or want of 

 ' training, leads them to look at things from what for the 

 ' time is the heretical point of view : men whose tempera- 

 ' ment prompts them to question every geological opinion 

 ' that admits of a doubt, or of an alternative explanation. 

 ' Again and again have these venturesome pioneers opened 

 ' out new and almost undreamt of paths in the science, and 

 ' their very mistakes have proved admirable guide-posts for 

 ' their successors. 



" And, certainly, foremost among those who have always 

 ' advanced our science and are daily extending its influence 

 'are those who deal with its practical applications, in 



