PHYSIOGRAPHIC PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY 649 



most significant to the student of nature, and of profound import to 

 the future of the human race. From the point of view of the physio- 

 grapher, the ultimate result of these great changes in the surface con- 

 ditions of the earth can to a great extent be expressed in one word, 

 and that word is desolation. In view of the suicidal lack of fore- 

 thought manifest in the activities of peoples, and, as experience 

 shows, increasing in many directions in destructiveness with indus- 

 trial progress, the problems that confront the physiographer are not 

 only what far-reaching changes in the surface condition of the land 

 result therefrom, but how the ruin wrought can be repaired, and how 

 human advancement can be continued and its deleterious conse- 

 quences on the fundamental conditions to which it owes its birth and 

 development be avoided or lessened. Considerations which lessen 

 the horrors of the regions crossed by industrial armies are that nature, 

 no matter how severely torn, has great recuperative power and tends 

 to heal her wounds; and also that man, through the science of agri- 

 culture particularly, although greatly modifying natural conditions, 

 is able to reconstruct his environment, and, so long as intelligent care 

 is exercised, adjust it to his peculiar needs. 



In the relations of physiography to man, as the above hasty sketch 

 is intended to show, the themes for research are many and important. 

 As a suggestive summary, they include the review of history with 

 the aid that modernized physical geography furnishes; the recognition 

 of a strong undercurrent due to inorganic conditions in the political, 

 social, and industrial development of peoples; the incorporation of 

 physiographic laws into the formulas used by the engineer in all of 

 his far-reaching plans; the calling of a halt in the wanton destruction 

 of the beauties of nature, and the providing of a check on the greed 

 of man which casts a baneful shadow on future generations. Great as 

 are the results to be expected from a better knowledge of the mode 

 of origin of the earth, its deformation by internal changes, and the 

 removal and redeposition of material by forces resident on its sur- 

 face, the combined results of all these studies culminate in the relation 

 of man to his environment. 



