Nevertheless, you can learn--
and I should earnestly advise you to learn--geology and mineralogy
enough to be of great use to you in your profession, and of use,
too, should you relinquish your profession hereafter. It must be
profitable for any man, and specially for you, to know how and where
to find good limestone, building stone, road metal; it must be good
to be able to distinguish ores and mineral products; it must be good
to know--as a geologist will usually know, even in a country which
he sees for the first time--where water is likely to be found, and
at what probable depth; it must be good to know whether the water is
fit for drinking or not, whether it is unwholesome or merely muddy;
it must be good to know what spots are likely to be healthy, and
what unhealthy, for encamping. The two last questions depend,
doubtless, on meteorological as well as geological accidents: but
the answers to them will be most surely found out by the scientific
man, because the facts connected with them are, like all other
facts, determined by natural laws. After what one has heard, in
past years, of barracks built in spots plainly pestilential; of
soldiers encamped in ruined cities, reeking with the dirt and poison
of centuries; of--but it is not my place to find fault; all I will
say is, that the wise and humane officer, when once his eyes are
opened to the practical value of physical science, will surely try
to acquaint himself somewhat with those laws of drainage and of
climate, geological, meteorological, chemical, which influence,
often with terrible suddenness and fury, the health of whole armies.
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