500 SCIENCES OF THE EARTH 



included under geography. It has been recognized for many years 

 that no geographical description of a region is complete without some 

 account of its plants and animals, and especially of its peoples: just 

 as no paleogeographic account of a geological horizon would be satis- 

 fying if its fossil fauna and flora were left unmentioned. But in recent 

 years it has been seen to be necessary to treat uniformly all the organic 

 elements of geographical descriptions in their relations to environing 

 controls: for, as I have already shown, if a beginning is made there is 

 no reasonable stopping-place until this end is reached. 



We are, in this matter, still sometimes too much under the control 

 of traditional methods of treatment; we do not fully enough put into 

 practical effect the greater lessons that we have learned. The earth as 

 the home of man is a primitive, elementary definition of geography; 

 the earth as the home of life is more consistent with present progress. 

 Earth-science has now certainly reached a position in which the unity 

 and continuity of life are recognized. Let us then adopt this position 

 as our starting-point in the organic half of geography that may be 

 called ontography. Let us make it practically useful by treating all 

 organic responses to environment under one general heading, even 

 though we afterwards find it desirable to treat human responses in 

 a separate chapter. For even if man's will sets him high above the 

 other forms of life, it must not be forgotten that his will often leads 

 him along physiographic lines; and that he possesses many struc- 

 tures and habits entirely independent of his will, and similar to the 

 structures and habits of lower animals, as examples of ontographic 

 responses. Even human houses and roads are only different in degree 

 from the houses and roads made by animals of many kinds. Still 

 more, if we accept the principle of the continuity of geography through 

 geology, we must recognize that most of the successive geographies 

 of the past have had nothing to do with the human will; and that 

 man and his works are after all only modern innovations. 



The chief impediment to action upon this view, which, as I have 

 said, has been unfolded before us by the progress that our science has 

 already made, is the habit of studying geography and geology too 

 separately, and of regarding the former as a subject for narrative 

 treatment, while the latter is admittedly a subject for scientific inves- 

 tigation. The hint to this effect that is given by the unlike constitu- 

 tion of geographical and geological societies, the world over, ought not 

 to pass unnoticed. Membership in many geological societies is lim- 

 ited to experts; if membership in a single geographical society is 

 similarly restricted, I have yet to learn of it. 



Let us then build on the progress we have made; let us realize that 

 only when ontography is treated as thoroughly as physiography will 

 geographical work gain the best geographical flavor. So empirical 

 has been the traditional geographical treatment of the organic ele- 



