608 PHYSIOGRAPHY 



not do better than endeavor to give expression to this course of 

 development. 



If now we seek the controlling points of view of the American and 

 British investigators, as revealed by their studies, we are soon con- 

 vinced that their conceptions of physiography are widely divergent. 

 The British regard physiography as the science of natural processes, 

 while the Americans consider it, essentially, as that part of what in 

 Europe is called physical geography, which deals with the visible 

 features of the continents. It is evidently from the latter standpoint 

 that physiography stands by the side of cosmical physics, geo- 

 physics, and oceanography, as one of the eight earth-sciences on the 

 programme of the International Congress of Arts and Science; and 

 we shall here consider it from this point of view. 



Physiography appears to me as a part of geography, that great 

 mother-science from which so many members have branched off, 

 at first as individual branches only, but soon developing into inde- 

 pendent sciences. Physiography belongs to these latter. Its close 

 relation to the mother-science is still shown by the European name, 

 i. e., physical geography, while the American name indicates that 

 it is already becoming an independent branch by reason of its great 

 literature. 



In order to understand the exact position which physiography 

 occupies it is necessary first to gain some appreciation of the aims 

 and problems of geography. Scarcely any other science is the object 

 of views so contradictory. To one geography is an agglomeration of 

 sciences which are distinguished from one another by their methods, 

 to another it is only a method applicable to the most widely differing 

 sciences. 



This difference of conception is due to the great age of the science. 

 Geography was recognized as a science long before modern specializa- 

 tion brought forth the present geographical sciences, and at first it 

 treated of problems that since have become the special fields of the 

 one or the other of these. Increasing systematization has led to a 

 sharp separation of most allied sciences from their mother-sciences, 

 but in the case of geography new problems are constantly arising 

 which serve to obliterate such separation. Very considerable portions 

 of the earth's surfaces are still unknown, extensive regions are yet 

 to be opened up, and there the geographical investigator meets 

 problems which belong to the provinces of the auxiliary geographical 

 sciences when they are encountered in the better-known regions of 

 the globe. In the one case geographical investigations must be prose- 

 cuted in a different manner from those in the other case. Under the 

 first circumstances the investigator must himself use the instruments 

 of the auxiliary science, while under the other he may concentrate 

 his attention upon a more limited field. 



