VOLUME XXIV. 



THE GEOGRAPHY OF IRELAND AS A FIELD 

 FOR IRISH NATURALISTS. 



BY PROF. GRENVILLE A. J. COLE, M.R.I. A., F.G.S. 



The naturalist claims kinship with all scientific workers, 

 though many scientific workers would hesitate to regard 

 themselves as naturalists. The tendency towards speciali- 

 sation is often deplored ; but close attention to one line 

 of research soon leads to a sense of dependence on results 

 obtained in other branches. The whole of scientific work, 

 as the term is usually understood, deals with natural 

 phenomena, and nature herself becomes the ultimate region 

 of appeal. The physicist who speculates as to the earth's 

 age becomes confronted by facts in biology and geology ; 

 the chemist, whenever he takes up a mineral, finds himself 

 in alliance with natural history ; and the engineer meets the 

 microscopist in the contemplation of a drop of water from a 

 town-supply, where competing organisms battle for the 

 lives of men. A wide field of Natural History has, more- 

 over, been opened out for every thinking man, for the 

 historian equally with the student of rock -weathering, for 

 the psychologist side by side with the meteorologist, through 

 the recognition of Geography as a science. Grasping the 

 significance of the movement in other lands, the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture and Technical Instruction has lost no 

 time in including Geography in its curriculum for Secondary 

 Schools. Let us hope that in consequence the geography 

 of their country will be a familiar study to our rising Irish 

 naturalists. 



