PHYSIOGRAPHIC PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 629 



describing and classifying the features of the earth's surface. A 

 scientific physiographical nomenclature is of importance, not only 

 to the special students of the earth's surface, but through them to 

 communities and patrons. The diverse interpretations that have been 

 given to such seemingly simple terms as "shore," "lake," "river," 

 "hill," "mountain," "divide," etc., as is well known, have led to 

 misunderstandings, litigations, international disputes, and even 

 threatened to bring on war between highly civilized nations. A duty 

 which physiographers owe, not only to their science in order that 

 its continued advancement may be assured, but to communities 

 in payment for the terms borrowed from them, as well as for the gen- 

 eral good, is a systematic effort to define accurately the words and 

 terms now used to designate the features of the earth's surface. 

 Careful attention needs to be given also to the coinage of new terms 

 when their need is definitely assured. An appropriate task for a group 

 of physiographers would be the preparation of a descriptive geo- 

 graphical dictionary, suited to the wants of both the specialist and 

 the layman. 



While considering the advantages of a language of science, its 

 disadvantages should also be recognized. 



The histories of all sciences show that, as they became more and 

 more precise, and as their nomenclature grew so as to meet their 

 internal requirements more and more completely, they at the same 

 time, on account of the very precision and accuracy of their lan- 

 guage, became more and more circumscribed and farther and farther 

 removed from the great mass of humanity for whose use and benefit 

 they exist. Not only this, but a science dealing with facts of vast 

 public importance and filled with instructive and entertaining mat- 

 ter nay, in itself even poetic and as fascinating as the pages of a 

 story-book - - has, in not a few instances, been rendered difficult to 

 understand, and even repellent to the general reader, by a bristling 

 array of esoteric terms built about it like an abatis. 



Between the two extremes, on the one hand, a science without 

 words in which to speak concisely and accurately, the condition in 

 which the physiographer finds himself at the present time; and, on 

 the other hand, a science with a language so technical and abstruse 

 that it seems a foreign tongue to the uninitiated, - - is there not a 

 happy mean? Such a much-to-be-desired end seems to be within the 

 grasp of the physiographer. By giving precision to and defining the 

 bounds of words inherited from physical geography, and adding to 

 the list such terms as are strictly essential in the interest of economy 

 of time and space, or for accuracy,-- such contributions, so far as 

 practicable, to be chosen from the language of every-day life,-- it 

 would seem as if a nomenclature could be formulated which would 

 at the same time meet the requirements of the scientific student 



