502 SCIENCES OF THE EARTH 



in which time-sequence is the dominant idea, made up, like an endless 

 prism of mica, of an indefinite number of momentary sheets of geo- 

 graphy that cleave across the time-axis. Biography would then lose its 

 limitation to man, and become the study of temporary floras and 

 faunas in successive geographies; while biology would give up its 

 usual meaning and become the study of life in the developmental 

 sequence of organic evolution through geological time. The study of 

 the minerals and rocks of any epoch would be minerography and 

 petrography, while mineralogy and petrology would treat problems of 

 paragenesis and metamorphism, in which the passage of time is essen- 

 tial; and for one, I should then be able to remember what petrography 

 and petrology mean. So we might go on with physiology, meteorology, 

 and oceanology, as made up of a succession of physiographies, meteor- 

 ographies, and oceanographies, and we should have glaciology and 

 climatology made up of glaciography and climatography ; and on- 

 tology, or the sequence of organic responses to the changing earth, 

 would be made up of a succession of ontographies. 



Schemes of terminology, however, are not often successfully made 

 to order in this fashion; they are slowly evolved without much regard 

 to system, as is seen in the haphazard nomenclature of oceans, seas, 

 gulfs, and bays. Minerography is strange to the point of offense to 

 the ear; we cannot take over biography and physiology from their 

 present uses; we must get along with such terms as we have, and with 

 such new ones as are added from time to time. My only object in sug- 

 gesting this fanciful scheme is to bring more clearly forward the space 

 and time relations that are recognizable in all branches of our subject, 

 as well as in geography and geology. The progress of the last century 

 has certainly brought us now to a stage when these general relation- 

 ships may be in good part understood, if we give heed to them. We 

 fail to take the best advantage of our progress, if we see only the 

 specialized development of our several sub-sciences. 



It has of ten seemed to me as if petrol ogists were rather overwhelmed 

 at present with the flood of new facts that modern methods of re- 

 search have let loose upon them; yet how greatly is the study of both 

 mineralogy and petrography broadened by the addition of the contin- 

 uous to the momentary consideration of minerals and rocks that 

 the flood has swept before us; for even the rocks have their phases of 

 youth and age. So brief is our life, that geomorphologists are even 

 to-day hardly accustomed to the systematic mobilization of land- 

 forms; yet the description of the lands is greatly strengthened when 

 their forms are seen to be fixed only in the sense that an express train 

 seems to be fixed before the instantaneous wink of the camera's eye. 

 The ontographer may be bewildered when he realizes what the evolu- 

 tionary struggle for existence means to the individual ; and when he 

 thinks how long the world was the scene of relentless strife before 



