488 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



the side of the economist and the British public at large. 

 It is strange how so few of those who interest themselves 

 in the commercial progress of the British Islands and our 

 great Colonial Empire are aware how great a part is 

 played by matters purely geological, and by the minerals 

 and mineral wealth, which naturally falls to be dealt with 

 by practical geologists. And here, perhaps, I may quote 

 what I wrote upon the matter some years ago when 

 treating of some of the work done by geologists and by 

 geology in Britain. " It is a fact which no one dreams of 

 disputing, that the primal cause of the uninterrupted 

 progress of our country, almost from the days of the great 

 Elizabeth down to those of the greater Victoria, has been 

 the vast store of mineral wealth that Nature has placed 

 round the homes and at the very feet of our people. Talk 

 of the great landed nobles as we may, boast of the sturdy 

 yeomen of the land and the hardy sailors of the seas, yet 

 at the back of them 'all, at the back of all our national 

 progress and prestige, lie the great coalfields and iron- 

 fields, which have founded and fed our great manufactur- 

 ing districts. These in their turn have furnished employ- 

 ment and subsistence to our teeming populations, have 

 brought wealth, leisure and influence to our middle classes, 

 and have afforded to the nation at large the means of 

 trade and inter-communication at home, of transport and 

 commerce on the seas and of colonisation and conquest 

 abroad." 



Let us consider the economic relations of geology in 

 Britain alone, and endeavour to realise, at any rate in 

 outline, the enormous value of the mineral products with 

 whose nature and distribution the geologists have to deal. 

 The monetary value of our mineral products at the pit 

 mouth alone, according to the latest published Blue Book 

 (1900) on the subject, amounted to more than 135 millions 



