F. GEOGRAPHY. 103 



F. GEOGRAPHY. 



PROBLEMS IN PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



A recent number of The Academy contains a notice, by 

 Keith Johnston, Jun., of a collection of essays by Oscar Pes- 

 chel, composed of a series of articles published in Aicsland, a 

 weekly journal of geography and anthropology, of which Dr. 

 Peschel was editor until quite recently, when he was succeed- 

 ed by Dr. Bocmeister, and still more lately by Fr. von Hell- 

 wald. The subjects discussed in these essays consist of cer- 

 tain problems in comparative geography, in this instance re- 

 stricted more to the purely physical conditions of the earth 

 than is the case in the well-known work of Carl Ritter,which 

 Peschel thinks should be entitled " Geographical Theology, 

 or an Attempt to Penetrate the Design of the Creator from 

 a Study of his Works." Various subjects are treated of in 

 this series, among the more noteworthy of which, according 

 to Mr. Johnston, may be mentioned that on the formation of 

 fiords, which are deep and precipitous cuttings into a steep 

 coast, generally at a high angle, and are usually aggregated 

 together considerably wherever they occur. They are found 

 only on the coasts of Europe and America, and mostly on 

 west or north coasts, being confined in Europe to regions 

 north of the fifty-first parallel ; on the east coast of America 

 to the forty-fourth, and on the west coast to above the forty- 

 eighth degree. In the southern hemisphere no fiords occur 

 within a limit of forty-one degrees from the equator. On a 

 careful examination of these fiords, their bounds are found to 

 agree with the winter isothermal lines, none of them occur- 

 ring in any warmer zone than that shut off by a yearly tem- 

 perature of 50 Fahr. Within this space, however, they nev- 

 er fail to appear where a steep coast-line and heavy rain-fall 

 are seen to exist together. In general they are either chan- 

 nels through which glaciers find their way at present to the 

 sea, or show marks of having been formerly occupied by them. 



In answer to the question whether these physical features 

 may'not have been produced by glaciers, Dr. Peschel responds 



