1887] Instruction in Geological Investigation. SII 
_ once make my statements specific and tell you little more than 
_ my own plan and practice of instruction in this broad subject. 
Neither plan nor practice has much age to recommend it; both 
vary, to their improvement I trust, from year to year; and it 
should be explained at the beginning that my experience does 
not reach to either one of two branches of geological study that 
occupy much attention,—palzontology and petrography: there 
is enough to begin with in structural and physical geology. ` 
Investigation begins with learning to see for oneself. The first 
teaching in geological investigation should therefore be made 
_ ‘arly in the course of study, and not postponed so that only ad- 
= Vanced students and specialists can reach it. College sopho- 
mores, having had a general lecture course on geology in their 
freshman year, are well prepared for the first steps ; but they are 
truly first steps that are then taken, for the face of the country 
= „© no expression to young men who have indeed learned what _ 
. 's considered the saving quantity of classics, mathematics or 
d history, but who are unpractised in observation ; their eyes are 
, not yet opened’ to the sight of the land about them. Sometimes, 
F to be sure, a student comes bringing with him the popular im- 
Pression that he is something of a geologist because he can give 
2 “a Specific names of a number of minerals and fossils, learned 
Ma cabinet; and he may be excused for thinking so, for does 
4 m bugs geologist meet, during his summer travels, the em- 
i barrassing necessity of simulating an interest in the kind atten- 
4 "e of his host who wishes to exhibit some “curious mineral” 
: T Sasi footprint,” as if the geological attractions of the neigh- 
: “oi centred therein ? The mental philosophy of geology 
lan unopened book even to intelligent people. Naturally 
ough, therefore, the student; who has imbibed the popular con- 
ton of the study, or who has learned only from books and 
a full st a series of verbal definitions and explanations, comes to 
FA stop on being told that he is to discover for himself and 
logic ci own observation the correlation and sequence of geo- 
difia phenomena in the district around him. The fundamental 
a. he feels is the inability to see what he looks at. 
— isof k. difficulty is fairly overcome, the gain that he has made l 
education value in his general as well as in his geological 
oof that I find in this very fact the warrant for the election 
© Study of field geology by many more young men than the 
