150 The American Geologist. March, i89o 
Besides laboratory work there is perhaps no branch of nat- 
ural history which more emphatically demands field work for 
its students than does geology. This is due largely to the 
fact that the little indoor or laboratory work the geological 
student can do is directly and entirely dependent upon his 
field work. Then, too, in other studies we can have and do 
have our laboratories in which nearly all the student's obser- 
vations are made. In botany and in zoology, in histologic 
studies and in chemistry and physics, the materials may be 
successfully studied in the laboratory, but the geologist, whose 
studies are often valuable in proportion to the range of his 
direct observations, can not take his stratigraphy and his 
topography into a laboratory. His laboratory, except in cer- 
tain parts of petrographic and biologic studies and in the 
office work on his maps, is out of doors. 
In its professional bearing the most essential part of a geol- 
ogist's training should be to the end that he observe well, and 
that in his deductions he properly subordinate his facts. His 
preliminary technical training should therefore be for the 
purpose of teaching him accuracy and detail. The necessity 
of accuracy should be so deeply impressed upon his mind that 
accuracy will become a part of his nature. After this lesson 
is learned he must be taught speed, without sacrificing in the 
least his accuracy. 
I believe Dr. Chamberlin, president of the University of 
Wisconsin, recently delivered an address before the Western 
Society of Naturalists upon multiple working hypotheses. I 
have not seen this address, but I can readily imagine that he 
presented in detail the advantages of this method of scientific in- 
vestigation, in the use of which I am, myself, greatly Dr. Cham- 
berlin's debtor. In my own experience I have found it of the great- 
est value and I know of no better way of developing the reason- 
ing powers or of anticipating difficulties, or of reaching 
right conclusions than by the proper use of hypotheses. 
As the whole professional training of the geologist is for the 
purpose of enabling him to reach correct conclusions, he 
should be trained in the use of every method of investigation 
that will aid him, and among these aids I count as of great 
importance that of multiple working hypotheses. 
Besides having a broad general culture, a geologist must be 
par excellence a geologist, and besides being a geologist he 
