Open-air Studies

PREFACE

Now that the elements of chemistry and physics are at last taking their place in the fundamental courses of selfrespecting schools, we may fairly hope that a large number of persons will grow up with an intelligent interest in the world around them. In the first chapter of this book, I have gone lightly over some of the ground covered by such earlier lessons; and I take heart from the fact that Mr. Small, in his excellent little work, "The Earth," has felt it incumbent upon him to make the same reminders. I then ask the reader to step boldly forth into the outer air. In our walks abroad, we may be struck by this or that detail, seemingly trivial in itself, which finally leads up to some one of the vexed problems of the globe. Even in so simple a book as this, I have not spared references to sources of information, abroad as well as at home; for one of the great incentives in scientific life is the knowledge that in all countries our fellow-observers are ready, and that our friends are constant in their aid. I have tried to deal in a sufficiently wide spirit with the special districts that are referred to, so that the observations may be transferred and applied to the immediate surroundings of the reader, or to the scenery of his summer holidays. Now-a-days, when cycling is so frequent and so free a means of travel, the geography and geology of nearer Europe have become keen realities to many of us, and almost all the references to landscapes in these chapters are the outcome of journeys on the road.

I have wilfully mingled metric and English measurements throughout the book, since it seems that in this way alone we may hope to render popular the refined system of our neighbours, a system too often restricted to purely technical works. Maps, moreover, form an important part of the equipment of an observer in the field; and outside our islands we soon

learn to think in kilometres per centimetre when studying their various scales.

The great aim of this little book is to keep in view the fact that geology, like true zoology and true botany, is a study of the open air. To dissect a rabbit in the laboratory is a more intellectual exercise than to shoot him as he runs across the sand-hills; but the object of such study, after all, is the understanding of the rabbit when alive. The average sportsman, with a careful eye for the habits of an animal, may at times go nearer towards this end than the average student at his microscope; and, similarly, it is only by a combination of two types of observation that a sound geologist can be made. Almost all great progress in natural knowledge has thus been made by those who have seen and travelled, by those, in fact, who have studied in Nature's roofless school.

Any person can now put himself in communication with his local field-club, in whatever quarter he may settle, and can thus receive the guidance of specialists in almost every county of our islands. For help in the many illustrations, which have been kept before me or which have been actually reproduced in these pages, I am indebted largely to active members of the Geologists' Association-to Dr. Tempest-Anderson, Prof. Johnston-Lavis, Mr. Henry Preston, Mr. E. P. Ridley, and Mr. F. Woolnough; while the work of that true artist, Mr. Welch of Belfast, has added greatly to any interest which the book may now possess. I can only give my thanks for such good-fellowship and assistance, and may perhaps hope in turn to be of some service to my friends. It is especially pleasant to me to include two plates from my Father's series of geological photographs, which formed perhaps my earliest introduction to the study of geology out-of-doors.

GRENVILLE A. J. COLE.

DUBLIN, May 1895.