How much or how little of Historical Geology should be given in schools
will depend upon circumstances. Great care, however, should be taken to
avoid wearying the youthful student with strings of mere names. What
good is gained by learning to repeat the names of fifty or a hundred
fossils, if you cannot recognise any one of these when it is put into
your hand? With young beginners I should not attempt anything of that
kind. If the neighbourhood chanced to be rich in fossils, I should
take my pupils out on Saturday to the sections where they were found,
and let them ply their hammers and collect specimens for themselves. I
should describe no fossils which they had not seen and handled. Of the
more remarkable forms of extinct animals and plants, which are often
represented by only fragmentary remains, I should exhibit drawings
showing the creatures as they have been restored by the labours of
comparative anatomists. Such restorations and ideal views of geological
scenes like those given by Heer, Dana, Saporta, and others, convey far
more vivid impressions of the life of a geological period than the
most elaborate description. In fine, the story of our earth should be
told much in the same manner as Scott wrote the history of Scotland
for his grandson. There is no more reason for requiring the juvenile
student to drudge through minute geological data before introducing him
to the grand results of geological investigation, than there is for
compelling him to study the manuscripts in our Record Offices before
allowing him to read the history which has been drawn from these and
similar sources of information. It is enough if at the beginning of
his studies he has already learned the general nature of geological
evidence and the method of its interpretation. Provided with such a
stock of geological knowledge as I have indicated, our youth would
leave school with some intelligent appreciation of existing physical
conditions, and a not inadequate conception of world-history.
II.
The Physical Features of Scotland.[B]
[B] _Scottish Geographical Magazine_, vol. i., 1885.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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