niversity emblem]

Bureau of Economic Geology and Technology
Division of Economic Geology
J. A. Udden, Director of the Bureau and Head of the Division

Published by the University six times a month and entered as
second-class matter at the postoffice at
AUSTIN, TEXAS

The benefits of education and of useful knowledge, generally
diffused through a community, are essential to the preservation
of a free government.

Sam Houston

Cultivated mind is the guardian genius of democracy.... It is the
only dictator that freemen acknowledge and the only security that
freemen desire.

Mirabeau B. Lamar

FOSSIL ICE CRYSTALS

BY J. A. UDDEN

AN INSTANCE OF THE PRACTICAL VALUE OF "PURE SCIENCE"

The practical value of the service of the geological profession is, with
every year, being more and more appreciated, especially among people who
are developing the mineral resources of our country. Nevertheless, we
still hear men who speak of geologists as theorists that render our
profitable industries but little assistance. It is true that much of the
work that geologists do has but a remote bearing on practical questions.
The fact is that in geology, as in other sciences, one can never know
when a purely scientific observation may turn out to have a practical
application. Paleontologists who study the minutest details of fossils
have been held up as impractical people, even though their science has
more than once proved to be of the greatest practical importance for the
finding of valuable natural deposits. Certainly those who have been most
prominent in the promotion of paleontology as a science have seldom, if
ever, had any economic motive in the pursuit of their work. I think the
same is true of our leading petrographers. I believe that the men who
have advanced the science of geology most, have seldom contributed much
to the practical application of the principles they have discovered.
Much scientific work naturally appears unprofitable or useless to the
uninitiated. I shall here relate a case that suggests how entirely wrong
it may be to regard as of no economic value any geologic fact, however
insignificant it may appear.

In the summer of 1890 I took occasion to make a trip to the Black Hills
in South Dakota in order to profit, as I could, by a few weeks' tramping
in thi