Editorial Coynmeni. 41 
them. If they are demanded to a feeble or partial extent, the 
schools will make feeble or partial provision for them. In the 
schools, therefore, the central effort is made to supply a prepar- 
atory education which does not embrace natural history and 
geology. The student in the university aiming at service in 
the schools, prompted by self-interest, shapes his studies to the 
nature of the demands existing. We do not wish to leave the 
suspicion that we think it just for the schools to provide only, or 
chiefly, such sub-collegiate education as opens the way to col- 
lege; but our purpose is simply to point out the facts, however 
deplorable or however commendable, which place the study of 
geology at a disadvantage. 
When now, after such a survey of the relation of the differ- 
ent fields of university study to the means of earning a liveli- 
hood, we grasp the whole situation at one view, it quickly 
appears that geology, if pursued in college or lower school, 
must be studied from motives more purely unprofessional than 
in the case of nearly all other studies. But the simple search 
for knowledge possesses with most minds a less controlling in- 
fluence than the search for means of support. Even in the 
collegiate or academic departments of the university, the profes- 
sional motives find room for such activity that geology and 
natural history stand at a marked disadvantage. When we look 
more closely, we learn that the disadvantage does not really con- 
sist chiefly in numbers in attendance upon instruction, but in 
the lack of adequate and equal material sustenance afforded by 
the government of the universitv. The discrimination against 
these studies is prompted by three motives: ist. The scholastic 
authorities entertain the traditional conceptions of the require- 
ments for a liberal education, and are not sufliciently informed in 
the sciences to admit that they are equal means of culture; and, as 
the outcome of their prepossesions and their ignorance, succeed 
in turning the revenues of the university into the channels which 
they approve. 2d. The financial control of the university de- 
termines its policy partly by the recommendations of the scho- 
lastic authorities, and partly by the amount which a department 
of study is able to return in the shape of fees which students 
with professional aims feel \\illing to pav. 3d. The supreme 
government of the university participates in the popular opin- 
