CLASS-ROOM INSTRUCTION. 321 



of familiar lectures a general acquaintance with those series of actions 

 which show the long continuous operations of energy in the orderly 

 march of events, taking pains at each convenient opportunity — there are 

 many such — to note how these processes have served to bring about the 

 conditions on which the development of peoples or of states depends. 

 Thus, in treating of volcanoes, the very humanized story of Vesuvius or 

 of -^tna, especially the dramatic episode of the death of Pliny the Elder, 

 is worth much to the teachers for the reason that it serves to bring a 

 sense of human affairs into a subject which for lack of illustration is 

 apt to remain remote and therefore uninteresting. The fact that the 

 story of these volcanoes, especially that of Vesuvius, is inwoven with that 

 of men forms a bond between the mind of the novice and an order of 

 nature which would otherwise be utterly unrelated to him. Again, in 

 treating of seashore phenomena, the history of harbors and their relation 

 to the development of states, affords a basis on which to rest the account 

 of coastline work. Yet again, in the matters connected with the forma- 

 tion of mineral deposits, which from the nature of the subject are apt 

 to be somewhat elusive, it is easy to fix the attention by reference to the 

 relation of those stores to the needs of man. So, indeed, in all parts of 

 this preliminary work of awakening and developing interest in his sub- 

 ject the teacher of geology, if he is to be successful, must go about his 

 task on the supposition that he has to extend existing interests to his 

 field. When men have for some hundred generations appreciated the 

 earth as we would have them do it, the process of selection or the inher- 

 itance of acquired characteristics may give a birthright interest in the 

 large problems of geology ; but while here and there a youth may be 

 found with a Hugh Miller's taste for the science, the teacher who reckons 

 on having his class thus inspired will fail to achieve success. 



METHODS OF FIELD TEACHING. 



As soon as the teacher through his work in the lecture-room has suc- 

 ceeded in extending the natural inborn interests of his pupils to the 

 problems of geology, instruction in the field should begin. In this part 

 of the work there is need of a great change in the methods and aims of 

 the teaching. While in the lecture-room the conditions require the 

 didactic method and exclude that of investigation, the reverse is the case 

 in the field. When I first essayed peripatetic teaching I made the grave 

 mistake in endeavoring to lecture with the phenomenon as a text. In 

 time I found that the fatigue and other disturbing conditions of the open 

 made students unable to profit by any such didactic method, and that 

 all such direct instruction should be done while they were in the more re- 

 ceptive conditions of the house. The true use of the field is to awaken 



