Page:The Journal of geology (IA journalofgeology11893univ).pdf/51

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
GEOLOGY AS PART OF A COLLEGE CURRICULUM.
39

once classify as among the practical sciences. It deals with matters of practical importance to everybody. Coal, iron, the metals, silver, gold, tin, lead, building stone, sand, clay, petroleum, and natural gas, and all geological products are essential materials of modern civilization, and a knowledge of them and of their modes and places of occurrence is one of the requisites of an education, either from the practical or the liberal point of view. So too the dynamics of atmospheric and hydraulic erosion, the agency of rivers and oceans in destruction, removal and reconstruction of geological formations have their eminently practical bearings upon the various arts of engineering. While the practical value of geology is thus evident and undisputed, it is not on this account that its importance as a part of a college course of education is urged. As a practical study geology becomes the centre of a group of studies requiring years for mastery. Chemistry and physics are primarily essential to a full understanding of the most common of geological problems. And to use geological facts and phenomena, an acquaintance with the complex methods of engineering, civil and mechanical, which again call for a thorough mastery of mathematics, is necessary. Mineralogy and petrography, metallurgy and mining engineering have each reached a stage of development entitling them to the rank of separate sciences, but the practical training of the geologist should include them all. When we add the biological sciences connected with historical geology, paleontology, zoölogy and botany, with all the laboratory and field work required for their proper study, we have a group of affiliated branches of learning requiring four or five years of continuous study after the student has learned how to study. It is plain therefore that only a specialist, one who is willing to neglect other studies, or who has previously had a liberal training, can perfect himself on the practical side in the science of geology.

But irrespective of its practical uses, as a means of training and supplementary to the ordinary studies of a college curriculum, geology is one of the most useful of the sciences of obser-

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.