It would be a very easy matter to adduce many further illustrations to
show how close is the connection between the studies of the physical
geographer and the geologist. I do not indeed exaggerate when I say
that no one can hope to become a geologist who is not well versed in
Physical Geography; nor, on the other hand, can the physical geographer
possibly dispense with the aid of Geology. The two subjects are as
closely related and interwoven, the one with the other, as History is
with Political Geography. I do not see therefore how educationists who
have admitted the great importance of Physical Geography as a branch
of general education, can logically exclude Geology as a subject of
instruction in schools. Already, indeed, it has been introduced by many
teachers, and I am confident that ere long it will be as generally
taught as Physical Geography. I would not, however, present the subject
to young people as a lesson to be learned from books. A good teacher
should be able to dispense with these helps, or rather hindrances--for
such they really are to a young beginner. His pupils ought to have
previously studied the subject of Physical Geography, and if they have
been well taught they ought to have already acquired no mean store of
geological knowledge. They ought, in fact, to have learned a good deal
about the great forces which are continually modifying the surface of
the globe, and what they have now to do is to study more particularly
the results which have followed from the constant operation of
those forces. We shall suppose, for example, that the teacher has
described how rivers erode their channels, and waves tend to cut back
a coast-line, and how the products of erosion, consisting of gravel,
sand, and mud, are distributed along river-valleys and accumulated in
lakes and seas. He now exhibits to his class good-sized fragments of
conglomerate, sandstone, and shale, and points out how each of these
rocks is of essentially the same character, and must therefore have
had the same origin, as modern sedimentary accumulations. His pupils
should be encouraged to examine the rocks of their own neighbourhood,
whether exhibited in natural sections or artificial exposures, and to
compare these with the products of modern geological action. One hour's
instruction in the field is, in fact, worth twenty hours of reading
or listening to lectures. Knowledge at first hand is what is wanted.
There are many excellent popular or elementary treatises dealing with
Historical Geology, and these have their uses, and may be read with
profit as well as pleasure. But the mere reading of such books, it is
needless to say, will never make us geologists. They help no doubt to
store the mind with interesting and entertaining knowledge, but they do
not cultivate the faculties of observation and reasoning. And unless
geology is so taught as to accomplish this result, I do not see why it
should enter into any school curriculum. Further, I would remark that,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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