642 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



has been made the subject of a series of recent papers by Presi- 

 dent Andrew White. It does not, however, concern us further 

 than to show that, although such violent opposition certainly re- 

 tarded the early and free development of geology, it was never- 

 theless not unfavorable to its ultimate success. The wide-spread 

 partisanship excited by theological discussions only disseminated 

 a broader knowledge of the subject, and hence a greater interest 

 in it, so soon as the hindrances to its cultivation were finally 

 removed. 



But it is to neither religious persecution nor to religious zeal 

 that we owe our modern science of geology. Dogma and discus- 

 sion might have been extended indefinitely without approaching 

 one whit nearer to the truth. Observation, not theory, was the 

 one thing needful. While the doctors were deciding whether or 

 not shells could have been strewn over mountain-tops by the 

 waves of Noah's deluge, the " practical men " of the earth were 

 busy in exploring its crust for hidden wealth. Some accurate 

 means of comparing and classifying the strata was to them a mat- 

 ter of necessity, and it need not surprise us to find that the first 

 real geologists were not professors, but " practical " miners ; that 

 the earliest germination of a truly scientific study of the earth 

 was not in the university, but in the technical school. 



At that remarkable period, about one hundred years ago, when 

 not merely the sciences, but Science herself in the modern sense, 

 sprang into life, geology was doubly prepared to receive the 

 benefit of the great awakening. As she gradually developed from 

 a creed into a science, there was twofold interest in her welfare : 

 the first, theoretical, or, as we may more properly say, theological, 

 since it amounted to a religious fanaticism ; the second, practical, 

 and brought about by the growth of mining industries and the 

 search for wealth. 



During the past century of geological activity the objective 

 points of these two ideas have been in succession more or less 

 cultivated. Among the theologians the question at issue related 

 to the fossils ; among the miners, on the other hand, to the 

 rocks. 



Originating, as the systematic study of the earth's crust did, 

 in the mining schools, it is not strange that the latter first received 

 the serious attention of scientific men. The rocks were the earliest 

 objects of investigation, and petrography, or the science of rocks, 

 was, naturally enough, the starting-point in geology. But as a 

 science, petrography was, at the outset, a failure, though not on 

 account of any lack of appreciation or patience on the part of its 

 cultivators. Mineralogy throve, but no means could be discovered 

 of applying her methods to the finer-grained rocks, and so the 

 interest in petrography necessarily declined. After repeated 



