434 ^^ Ohio. Naturalist. [Vol. VI, No. 3, 



pupils. Just as nature study introduces the plant and animal 

 kingdoms to the child and high school zoology and botanv con- 

 tinue to familiarize him with them, so as to pave the wav for 

 college and university research into the fundamental principles 

 of the sciences of zoology and botany; so nature study, and 

 subsequently, geography and physiography supply basal con- 

 ceptions for the extended quest for knowledge in the separate 

 sciences of our subject. 



We are now prepared for a brief treatment of the third division 

 of the subject, "their essential fields." We have gone far 

 enough already to Vjegin to see the scope of each. Physiography 

 describes, classifies, and discusses the origin of the features of 

 the earth. It compares similar and dissimilar, related and 

 unrelated forms always seeking to reduce the multitudinous 

 variety to a system, to group likes and correlate related speci- 

 mens. It concerns itself with the physiographic processes and 

 forces of the earth, air, and sea and endeavors to explain all the 

 workings of all, and to understand the nature of all physio- 

 graphic features. Such a field and purpose constitute piivsi- 

 ography a science. They proclaim it to have problems, easy 

 and hard, short and long, solved and unsolved, and I may say, 

 solvable and unsolvable. All this means, further, that the ele- 

 mentary introduction, which the high school boy receives, to the 

 general subject does not acquaint him with the science. It onlv 

 puts him in touch with some of its facts and theories, and 

 enables him to see and work out for himself, other truths; or to 

 pursue the subject more at length in the University. 



And geography possesses a field more biotic, anthropic, and 

 industrial but centering in the relation of the anthropic phenom- 

 ena to the physiographic. Its seeks to discover all responses of 

 mankind to his physical environment; to show how human 

 industries are related to the distribution of natural resources 

 and to the facilities for moving and marketing them; to show 

 why man lives where he does and as he does so far as these 

 depend upon the physiographic, climatic, and geographic con- 

 ditions or upon the distributions of natural features or phenom- 

 ena; to trace his institutions, the elements of his character and 

 the nature of his aspirations as far as they are related to the 

 physical surroundings; and, having accummulated all these data, 

 to reduce them to systems, and to organize them into laws and 

 principles. Geographers have been working in this field for two 

 milleniums and a vast body of material has been collected. 

 Much of the material has been classified; laws have been found,, 

 principles discovered, and, today, one of the oldest of sciences is 

 again finding itself. 



Here, too, only beginnings are mastered in the elementary 

 schools. In subject matter, both quality and quantity, and irt 



