15(3 The late Professor Edward Forbes's 



In this case money was made by geological knowledge, — 

 oftener it may be prevented being thrown away. 



Not a hundred miles from Edinburgh I have seen, since I 

 last lectured in this class-room, costly excavations in progress, 

 the object being a common one — the search after coal in a spot 

 where any geologist would have told the seekers that they 

 might as well throw their money into the sea. In this case a 

 good geologist, who knew the country well, did give timely 

 warning, but in vain. As if to illustrate the absurdity of this 

 wasteful and unscientific experiment, the so-called " practical" 

 men who conducted these operations were actually mining 

 amid vertical strata, sinking their shaft in the dip, and driv- 

 ing their galleries in the strata of the bed ; so that, however 

 long they continued their fruitless task, they would be (and 

 possibly at this moment are) constantly working in the same 

 bed in which they commenced. 



But I trust that, whilst there shall be no danger of the stu- 

 dents of this class making such preposterous blunders, they 

 will always bear in mind the intellectual dignity of the science, 

 and whilst they apply its results to every useful and economi- 

 cal purpose to which they may be adapted, never forget that 

 the grand aim and object is the contemplation and understand- 

 ing of the greatness and goodness of the Deity, as revealed to 

 us in creation. This purpose constitutes the worthiness of our 

 science, and stamps it with unmistakeable grandeur. 



Edinburgh has long been famous as a nursery of naturalists. 

 A large proportion of the most distinguished British zoologists 

 and geologists of our day, and not a few foreign ones, acquired 

 or cherished their taste for the study of nature in this univer- 

 sity. The physical advantages of the district have had doubt- 

 less much to do in attracting the minds of students to natural 

 history. But these would have been ineffective without the 

 teachings and enthusiasm of my late illustrious predecessor in 

 this chair, who was himself preceded by a less known but able 

 man, Professor Walker, imbued with a like spirit. The emi- 

 nent men who have gone before me held that the student who 

 aims at being a naturalist, in the proper sense of the word, 

 must combine biological with geological knowledge. For the 



