3. Sunday Readings, in The Chautauquan, selection for January 28.
C. L. S. C. ROUND-TABLE.[I]
The lecturer of the afternoon, Colonel Daniels, of Virginia, was introduced.
Colonel Daniels: Your commander-in-chief and shepherd of this flock asked me to talk about “How to Teach Geology.” I did not come down here for any such purpose. I came to have a little rest and have a good time, and get acquainted with Chautauqua. But as I am here, I am glad to be set at work in any way to keep me out of mischief.
He said on a subsequent occasion that he did not want me to give a written lecture. That reminds me of a story that I heard Senator Nye tell years ago in a speech. He told of one of those excellent boys that die young, standing by the roadside, and a man was on a prancing steed. The man said, “Boy, when I get up to you, don’t you take off your hat and make a bow and scare this colt; he will throw me off.” Said the boy, with rustic simplicity, “I was not going to.” [Applause and laughter.]
I suppose that my excellent friend has to keep on guard. There are prowling around through these trees people with their pockets stuffed full of old sermons and lectures, and he is always on guard to keep them from firing them off to scare his pet C. L. S. C. So I was not mad a bit. [Laughter.]
Well, now, to plunge in medias res, it is a beautiful thing to study geology. This planet was our birth place. It is the way of God. And here in its strata is written by the finger of God himself the history of all that mighty series of events through which it passed from the time it emerged from primary chaos until to-day. It is scarcely possible that any person should believe in studying the works of God, and fail to see that this portion of his work, which lies in immediate contact with us, from which in so many ways we draw sustenance, in connection with which we have our being, and from out of which flows the stream of that abundant supply which God has provided for his children, and which for all our time is to be the theater of action of our race, should be studied.
But how, how taught? Don’t give any written lectures now. I will tell you how not to do it. If you are going to teach geology, don’t deliver written lectures. Write all you can about it, but don’t deliver it. I delivered a written lecture once, and that is the reason I never delivered any more.
I began studying geology when a boy, when I was put to studying a hoe-handle and ten acres of corn for about three weeks. There were lots of these pieces of stone, and my uncle, a good old Methodist class-leader, told me that God put those stones there at the time of the deluge. That satisfied me. But when I was on a government survey away in the West, I saw hundreds and thousands of feet of those rocks, such as I saw this morning when I picked up these stones. Here you see a complete mass of shells. Such rocks make up the bluffs of the Mississippi River. We have twenty thousand feet of these in Colorado. Major Buell told me that he got in one place twenty-seven thousand feet. Then I was not satisfied. I began to look a little further. By-and-by, in the district school library, I got hold of Randall’s Geology, that blessed old book, and it began to open my mind a little. I was on these surveys, and I began to have more and more practical lessons. Among the lead mines of Wisconsin I found the miners wanted practical knowledge, and I undertook to teach them a little. I remember my first attempt on a slate; then I took my bristol-board and made some diagrams. And then in a store, and then in a church; in the basement first, and then I got up into the church. So I taught the rudest kind of people, and from one lecture, I gave two, three, four, five, and on up to fifteen. I gained a local reputation, and got to be State Geologist of Wisconsin, and was tolerably well known in that country as a practical geologist. But I had no scientific knowledge of geology.