Various

“ His studies lead him to investigation of the whole field of nature, the rocks, the formation of deposits, the action of the elements, the conditions of life, the forms of organism, their functions and habits, the laws of growth, their adaptation to environment, the changes of events in time, the efforts of association and struggle for life, the principles of evolution and development—the migration and origin and extinction of organisms on the globe. Nothing in nature is without interest to him. ”

“ The water of the rivers, the mud by the road side, the rocks and sands on the shore are familiar objects to all, and it is a simple matter to call attention by ordinary language to the specific facts regarding them, which, analyzed out, are to form the basis of exact ideas and scientific definition and classification. Geology is the one science among the natural sciences which may begin with the common language of the pupil, and by means of such language alone may build up ideas of precise phenomena in scientific terms. ”

“ All I can reasonably hope to do now is to have the evidence relating to glacial man placed on trial, and so fully examined and cross-examined that those who accept gravel man need not longer do so blindly without knowing that there are two sides to the question, and those who do not accept him may know something of the reasons for the belief that is in them. ”

“ Using the distinction between theory and practice, which is as old as Aristotle, geology in its theoretical aspect is more easily comprehended than is the theoretical aspect of most of the modern sciences. This arises first from the fact that the facts and phenomena are of a simple and grand nature, making it possible for the teacher to direct certain attention to the specific facts under consideration. ”

“ Geological literature is admirably adapted for this higher discipline, and in no field of science (I think not in astronomy itself) , has wider and more comprehensive thought been applied than in geology. While other branches of science have been developed and become more narrow and special in their treatment of the facts concerned, geology still stands as the most comprehensive of all the sciences of nature. ”

“ If, as many believe, vital errors have been embodied in the evidence presented by the advocates of the theory, it is impossible to state the case too strongly. Error once fully absorbed into the literature of science has many advantages over the tardy truth; it is strongly fortified and must be attacked and exposed without fear or favor. ”

“ The history of the utilization of rudely flaked stones in the attempt to establish a gravel man in America has never been written, but as read between the lines of paleolithic literature, it runs about as follows: The theory of a very rude and ancient people, having a unique culture and certain peculiar art limitations, was developed in Europe many years ago in a manner well known and often rehearsed. This people was associated with the ice age in Europe, and this epoch, with its moraines and till and sedimented gravels, was found to have been repeated in America. ”

“ Not a few glacialists, however, advocate in somewhat differing forms and phases the doctrine that basal material is carried upward into the body of the glacier and at length reaches the surface, and that at the extremity of the ice this is commingled with any erratics that may be englacial or superglacial by original derivation. This doctrine appears to have had its origin in the endeavor to explain the very common fact that glacial drift has been carried from lower to higher altitudes. Erratics are often found lodged several hundred feet higher than the outcrop from which they were derived. ”

“ So long as the object of the training is to teach the knowledge of ideas and how to use them, classics and mathematics are the simplest and purest means of developing a liberal education. The addition of sciences to the college course is not because of the usefulness of the knowledge of things thus to be gained, but because the language of the sciences is essential to call forth the observation and the exercise of the accompanying mental operations. ”

“ If, therefore, beneath the newer drift of any given locality there be found a lower drift, the surface of which is oxidized and leached to a considerable depth, the evidence is strong that the lower drift was exposed for a long period of time before the upper drift was deposited upon it. Within certain limits a similar result might be brought about, it is true, if the ice, after having reached a certain maximum stage of advance, were to retreat for a short distance only and there remain for a very long period of time. ”

“ Even when a single line of evidence, or when double, or triple, or quadruple lines of evidence are not absolutely conclusive in ruling out every conceivable technical escape from the conclusion that there were separate ice epochs, their cumulative and corroborative force may still be such as to carry conviction scarcely less positive than that which mathematical demonstration would afford. ”

“ It is a function which properly falls to universities, if the universities can only rise to « 86 » meet it; for it is the function of universities, in the larger modern view, not only to rehearse science, nor merely even to educate young geologists, important as that is, but to develop science for science's own sake, and for its own inherent and permanent utilities as distinguished from its immediate applicabilities. To fulfill this function they must not only realize and appreciate it, but they must be equipped for field and experimental work, as well as library and laboratory study. ”

“ This aspect of the science is best seen in the historical and stratigraphical parts of geology, in which fossils are the chief data for study. The interpretation of a fossil into a species of organism, having its definite place in the elaborate classification of the zoölogist, or as an indicator of the time and place and mode of formation of the strata in which it is buried, is, to be sure, a most intricate and, at first thought it would seem, an unattractive process. ”

“ Another phase of geology which is thought to stand in much need of active cultivation is found in the clear and sharp analysis of its processes, the exhaustive classification of its phenomena, especially on genetic bases, the development of criteria of discrimination, the more complete evolution and formulation of its principles and the development of its working methods. ”

“ The advocates of the unity of the glacial period maintain that such beds of organic matter might become interbedded with morainic debris during minor oscillations of the ice's edge. The phenomena of existing glaciers make it evident that forest beds or soils might be enclosed by the deposits of an oscillating ice edge. By repeated oscillations of the ice's edge during the general retreat of the ice, such vegetal beds might become interstratified with glacial drift more or less frequently over all the area once covered by the ice, and from which it has now disappeared. ”

“ If changes of any sort which interrupt the continuity of geological processes intervened between successive maxima of advance of the ice, the separation of the later advance from the earlier, as a distinct ice epoch, would be favored. How great the intervening changes should be in order to constitute the re-advance a distinct ice epoch, is a point concerning which there might be difference of opinion. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In other words, if, in addition to the greater surface erosion of the older drift sheet as now exposed outside the limit of the newer drift, we find a notable unconformity between the newer and the older drift, and especially if this unconformity lie far enough north of the margin of the newer drift, the argument becomes conclusive.
When differential erosion and drift unconformities are not in themselves conclusive, they may have great corroborative value in conjunction with differential weathering, forest beds, or other indications of separate ice epochs. ”

“ In language study this higher training comes from practice in making the minute analysis, in detecting the fine shades of meaning expressed in the literature itself. So it is important in selecting a science to be used as a disciplinary study that the facts and laws of nature with which it is concerned should be capable of clear and precise definition, and, moreover, that it should furnish a field for the study of the minute and intricate relationship existing between the different facts which are to be attained by personal inspection of the objects themselves. ”

“ How much of an oscillation is necessary, and under what attendant conditions must it take place, in order that the recession of the ice-edge shall mark an interglacial and its re-advance a distinct glacial epoch? When the question takes this specific form, and when inquiry is made concerning the quantitative value of the different elements entering into the problem, we reach the battled ground. It is the battled ground, partly because it is the ground of misunderstanding. ”

“ Nothing can be more fully apparent than that no other race than the Indian in his historic character and condition need be conjured up to reasonably account for every phase and every article of the recovered art. Mistaken interpretations of the nature of shop rejects, and the common association of these objects with redistributed gravels, are probably accountable for the many misconceptions that have arisen. Talus deposits form exceedingly treacherous records for the would-be chronologist. They are the reef upon which more than one paleolithic adventurer has been wrecked. ”

“ In the teaching of science this point is of great importance, and much of the unsatisfactoriness of science-teaching is doubtless due to failure to note it. No circumlocution of words can arouse in another or communicate to him the idea appropriate to a sensation he has never felt. ”

“ If therefore a soil developed on the surface of one sheet of drift and buried by another, be found to possess, in addition to unmistakable marks of long exposure, the peculiar marks which seem to be characteristic of soils developed under high temperatures, the argument gains in strength.
This argument from oxidation and weathering has another application. If in a later advance, following a protracted recession, the ice-sheet failed to reach the limit of its earlier advance, there would remain an area of drift deposited by the first ice-sheet, outside the drift deposited by the later. ”

“ The climatic conditions which obtain about the borders of small, local glaciers, are not a safe guide as to climatic conditions which obtained about the margin of a continental ice-sheet, any more than the climatic conditions which obtain about a small inland lake are a safe criterion as to the climatic conditions about a sea-coast. The general principles of climatology, as well as specific facts concerning plant distribution, seem to us to indicate that the climate about the border of a continental ice-sheet must have been arctic. ”

“ It is no answer to this argument to say that the materials lying at the very front of the drift deposits contain boulders which were derived from the disintegrated rock over which the ice has passed, and that they were therefore in a less firm state at the outset. In many cases these boulders have come from great distances, and coming from great distances they must have come in a firm and solid state, else they could not have suffered such extensive transportation, except indeed their position was superglacial throughout their whole journey. ”

“ It is less important that an arbitrary definition should be accepted, than that the same meaning should be attached to technical terms in common use among geologists. In the interest of harmony and of a common understanding, and without the violation of any truth of science, we believe it would be well if the conception of a glacial epoch, as framed by those who are our leaders in position and in fact, were made the basis for our usage of the term. ”

“ Greenland has very likely been experiencing continuous glaciation since a time antedating that of our first glacial deposits. The renewal to-day of glaciation comparable in extent to that of the glacial period would certainly be regarded as a distinct glacial epoch, if not a distinct glacial period, even though Greenland's glaciation may not have been interrupted. Scandinavia and Switzerland have probably not been freed from ice since the glacial period. Their snow and ice fields are probably the direct descendants of the ice fields of the glacial period. ”

“ Two hundred years of aboriginal misfortune and Quaker inattention and neglect have resulted in so mixing up the simple evidence of a day's work, that it has taken twenty-five years to collect the scattered fragments, to sift, separate and classify them, and to assign them to theoretic places in a scheme of culture evolution that spans ten thousand years. ”

“ The interpretation of the Greek reveals to us the richest results of human thought and most perfect laws of human speech, and we find therefore in the analysis required the most perfect discipline of the powers of speech and language. The fossil too holds, ready to be revealed, the story of the history of the world and the laws of the evolution of the organic life of the globe, and records an inexhaustible wealth of information regarding the laws of nature. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Geikie maintains that no part of Russia could have been covered with ice. If, then, within the limits of the area covered by the "lower diluvium," and not by the "upper," distinct beds of glacial drift are separated by such beds as those cited, there can be no question but that such separation marks two distinct glacial epochs. If there was an earlier glaciation when the movement of the ice in Sweden was at right angles to that during which the lower part of the "lower diluvium" was produced, this also would seem to be good evidence of three ice epochs prior to the "upper diluvium." ”

“ 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. ”

“ And geology, or any other science, is of value in a college course in proportion to its fitness for the exercise and development of these functions of the student. Geology may be taught without regard to these ends, and then it is valuable from the practical point of view, but when we examine it in respect of its availability as a disciplinary study we find it offering particular attractions. ”

“ The preservation of such surfaces after a second ice invasion must be regarded as the exception rather than as the rule. There is always the possibility, too, that an oxidized and weathered zone marking the surface of an older drift sheet exists, where excavations have not opened full sections of drift to view. The absence of weathered zones of drift beneath the surface, or the absence of knowledge of their existence, is therefore at best no more than negative evidence. ”

“ Ideal correlations and academic systematizing are as apt to be hindrances as helps to the progress of science. While a few of the great universities of this country and Europe have made notable advances in these directions, the universities are, on the whole, far behind the great surveys in the performance of the work which properly falls to them. This is due not so much to a lack of appreciation of the function as to the lack of facilities. ”

“ In the primary work of systematic observation, and the development of the immediate conclusions that spring therefrom, these surveys surpass all other agencies in the value of their contributions to the growth of the science, but in the secondary and ulterior work of correlation, in the synthetic aggregation and organization of results, and in the analytical and philosophical treatment of the whole, they need to be supplemented by agencies whose facilities and limitations lie in other lines, agencies whose relations and dependencies are complementary in nature. ”

“ In the pursuit of the study of geology, the first instruction must be received in didactic form, but after the text-book and lecture stage is passed, or while it is under way consultation of the literature of the sciences is appropriate. In the use of scientific literature the critical judgment is brought under training, and the varying interpretations of well known phenomena by expert scientists suggest the prominent part which the notions already in the mind play in the interpretation of the external facts observed. ”