GEOLOGY IN ECONOMICS AND EDUCATION. 495 



underground waters and weathering easily into open sub- 

 soil, has been settled upon for untold generations. The 

 earliest dwellers in the land fixed upon this waterstone 

 band for the sites of their homes, the barons of feudal 

 times for their castles, and their retainers for their 

 villages, the manufacturers and merchants of later times 

 for their places of trade and residence, and upon it to-day 

 are situated most of the chief towns of the Midlands and 

 their fashionable suburbs. Its rich soil has been culti- 

 vated for centuries, and year by year more and more of 

 its extent becomes enclosed for parks, gardens and 

 private estates. 



And so we might go on to shew how the health of our 

 people individually, and indeed many of the most 

 dominant factors in the hygiene of our towns and villages, 

 such as the dampness or dryness of the soil, sites 

 for town and village sewage disposal, water contamination 

 and the like, depend upon geological fact, and how 

 necessary in most cases is the careful application to these 

 of sound geological knowledge and practice. But I have 

 said enough, and perhaps more than enough, to shew how 

 the practical parts of geological science are bound up 

 with the wealth, the health and comfort of the people at 

 large, and how all of us are more or less affected, from 

 the economic point of view at any rate, by geological 

 facts and geological knowledge. The more that know- 

 ledge is added to by the geologist, and the more accurate 

 and the more widespread it becomes ; and further, the 

 quicker and the cheaper that knowledge is applied and 

 utilised by those concerned, the better will it be for the 

 health, the wealth, the comfort, and the progress of the 

 entire community. 



But this purely economic side of geology is only one of 

 the many aspects and departments of the science. In the 



