Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
would be paid to the National Scholars. Students failing to
attend on that day would not be paid until the following month.
However, even if they did attend, thirty shillings a week was
barely enough to live on. A third class railway fare was allowed
by the Board for one journey a year to and from London and the
home of the National Scholar.
In the first year all science students, regardless of their
intended specialisation, followed the same rigorous course of
nine hours instruction in mathematics and mechanics, and
twenty-one hours of chemistry and physics. The only rocks
prospective geology students would see in their first year were
those in the cobblestones as they rushed to their physics lec-
tures each morning hoping not to be late. In the second year
students had the option of taking geology with mechanics in
addition to the subjects already studied, so it was during this
year that Arthur Holmes was again exposed to geology.
Professor William Watts had joined the Royal College of
Science only the year before Holmes. An accidental geologist,
Watts had completed the geology paper in his exams at
Cambridge instead of the impossible chemistry paper he should
have been answering. As luck would have it both subjects hap-
pened to be on the same sheet. He grabbed the opportunity and
over the next three hours the potential chemist became a geol-
ogist. Prior to his arrival at the Royal College, the teaching of
geology had become a dry and dull affair, as witnessed by
H. G. Wells who had once studied geology there, but failed his
final exam. Wells acidly described the course as 'a great array of
damn cold assorted facts, lifelessly arranged and presented. The
exciting questions were never followed up - they were barely
hinted at'. But Watts changed all that and by the time Holmes
was studying geology there it was an exciting and dynamic sub-
ject. A man of great personality and charm, Watts excelled in
the lecture theatre with his talks on elementary geology.
Inspiring countless young men, and even some women, this
was the course upon which the department concentrated its
