500 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



forgotten, and every fresh out-door discovery gives him a 

 thirst for more knowledge of the subject and more out- 

 door delights. And, if no more results from the excur- 

 sion than this, yet as Sydney Smith puts it : " If you 

 make children happy now, you will make them happy 

 twenty years hence by the memory of it." But with a 

 good geological teacher infinitely more may result. Even 

 as a science of observation alone, geology trains the boy 

 to observe accurately, to record correctly, to compare and 

 to systematise, and at every fresh step there is a fresh 

 inference to be drawn or a new fact to be explained and 

 accounted for. Not only so, but the science of geology 

 branches out in all directions and the boy picks up almost 

 insensibly in the course of his work some of the more 

 important results obtained in other sciences, in chemistry, 

 in physics, in biology, in physical geography, in meteoro- 

 logy, and his mind becomes stored with facts of value 

 for him in his after life. His reasoning powers become 

 strengthened, broadened and stimulated by the host of 

 inferences and deductions, inductions and verifications he 

 has made during his geological progress. He learns the 

 use of maps and sections, his eye becomes trained to note 

 the form of the country, the distribution of its rock form- 

 ations and all their relations to nature and to man. 

 " When we recollect how many of the hundreds and 

 thousands of the jmpils in our public schools are destined 

 to become landowners, agents, architects, engineers, 

 officers, and the like, and it may be pioneers and dwellers 

 in the great colonies and dependencies of the Empire, it 

 appears almost a crime that at least the outlines of 

 geological science and physical geography are not taught 

 in every one of our public schools." 



That geology should be taught in every University 

 College goes without saying. I think I have said more 



