reference to standards of
admission,--that work done for practical purposes may be regarded as
scientific only if it leads to advancement of the science through the
publication of the results. There is by no means any general agreement
as to the validity of this distinction. On this basis, some of the most
effective scientific work which is translated directly into use for the
benefit of civilization is ruled out as science, because it is
expressed on a typewritten rather than on a printed page.

While applied phases of the geologist's work may be truly scientific in
the broader sense, it is undoubtedly easy in this field to drift into
empirical methods, and to emphasize facility and skill at the expense of
original scientific thought. The practice of geology then becomes an art
rather than a science. This remark is pertinent also to much of
non-applied geologic work in recent years. A considerable proportion of
this empirical facility is desirable and necessary in the routine
collection of data and in their description; but where, as is often the
case, the geologist's absorption in such work minimizes the use of his
constructive faculties, it does not aid greatly in the advancement of
science.

Geology is by no means the only science in which there has been
controversy as to the relative merits of the so-called pure and applied
phases; but as one of the youngest sciences, which heretofore has been
pursued mainly from the standpoint of "pure science," it is now, perhaps
more than any other science, in the transition stage to a wider
viewpoint. In the past there was doubt about the extension of chemistry
toward the fields of physics and engineering, and of physics toward the
fields of chemistry and engineering, and of both physics and chemistry
toward purely economic applications; but out of these fields have grown
the great sciences of physical chemistry, chemical engineering, and
others,--and few would be rash enough to attempt to draw a line between
the pure and applied science, or between the scientific and
non-scientific phases of this work. This general tendency means a
broadening of science and not its deterioration.

COURSE OF STUDY SUGGESTED

There are almost as many opinions on desirable training for economic
geology as there are geologists, and the writer's view cannot be taken
as representing any widely accepted standard. On the basis of his own
experience, however, both in teaching and in field practic