Abstract
LOOKING back across the fourth part of a century in the progress of any branch of science, we naturally turn first to the list of names of those to whose labours that progress has been due, and though many of these names may happily still be counted among the living, we note many a blank where the hand of death has thinned the ranks. Perhaps in this country no department of natural knowledge can boast a more illustrious bead roll than that of Geology. The story of the earth had hardly begun to be scientifically studied until the first decades of the present century, and some of the early fathers of geology lived on until well within the life-time of the present generation. A curious transition has thus been going on during the last five-and-twenty years. On the one hand, there have been moving amongst us geological magnates who achieved their fame in the old days when it was still possible for a man to possess a tolerably full personal knowledge of almost every department of the science. On the other hand, around these few living memorials of the heroic age, grew up hosts of younger men, who, finding the main lines already traced for them, have become in large measure specialists, devoting themselves with enthusiasm, but with more restricted vision, to one formation, or one group of rocks, or one tribe of fossils. The days of broad outlines and rapid generalisation have gone. No new systems remain to be added to the geological record of these islands. No new assemblages of extinct types of life now reward the sedulous collector. We have entered upon the era of minute detail and patient elaboration. The field-glass has given way to the microscope. The advance of the science must now be based on laborious research; less brilliant no doubt in its immediate effect, but probably not less lasting in its influence and its results.
Article PDF
References
NATURE, January 3 and February 7, 1895, pp. 224–341.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
GEIKIE, A. Twenty-Five Years of Geological Progress in Britain. Nature 51, 367–370 (1895). https://doi.org/10.1038/051367d0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/051367d0