PROGRESS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 501 



ments, so imperfectly have the organic elements been generally recog- 

 nized as balancing the inorganic elements in the make-up of the sub- 

 ject as a whole, that no name has come into use for the organic half 

 of geography corresponding to physiography for the inorganic half; 

 and it is to supply this lack that I have elsewhere suggested the name 

 above used. I believe that the adoption of some such name would aid 

 in the systematic cultivation and in the symmetrical development of 

 geography, and thus of geology also as a whole, by bringing more 

 prominently forward the necessity of giving or at least attempting 

 to give - - as scientific a treatment to the inhabitants of a region in 

 their geographic relations as to the region itself. 



The adoption of some such term as ontography would tend to 

 correct the false idea that geography is concerned only with the ele- 

 mentary and manifest examples of organic responses; it would pro- 

 mote thoroughness of study, and thus more fully continue the pro- 

 gress that we have thus far made. The adoption of the term would 

 moreover emphasize the principle of continuity through time, of the 

 geographical stratification of geology, w T hich is of so great importance 

 in the scientific development of our subject: for ontography, in which 

 persistent physiographic influences make themselves felt through 

 inheritance, is then seen to be only the modern member of a great 

 series with whose earlier members we have long been familiar in pale- 

 ontology. The recognition of the continuity, the essential unity, of 

 these two subjects -- one dealing with the living forms of to-day, 

 the other with the dead forms of the past - - dignifies the first and 

 vivifies the second; and adds yet another argument in favor of an 

 objective rather than a subjective classification of the sciences of the 

 earth. The beginning of the cultivation of ontography, already made 

 more or less consciously, strongly suggests a larger development for 

 the future. We are thus assured that as the details of organic responses 

 are worked out, and the importance of physiographic details is recog- 

 nized, the difference between physiography as the study of environ- 

 ment, and geochemistry and geophysics as the study of the earth 

 for itself, will diminish. To-day no one can say how far the details 

 of these semi-independent sciences may not be found essential in 

 physiography. 



Let me now amuse you for a moment with a scheme of terminology 

 that might have a little value if some of its terms were not already 

 appropriated in other meanings. The scheme does not represent the 

 historical development of earth-science, but sets forth its several 

 parts in the relations that our progress up to date shows them to 

 stand. 



Suppose we should use the ending, ology, to denote the conception 

 of sequence in time, and ography to denote the conception of tem- 

 porary distribution. We should then have our whole subject, geology, 



