MEMOIR OF GUYOT. 713 



most elevated kind. From Agassiz's home at Cambridge his acquaint- 

 ance extended rapidly, and he was soon known also as a man of prac- 

 tical ideas with regard to school instruction in geography and in other 

 subjects. It was at once accepted from him that the starting point in 

 geographical education should be nature and not books ; that teachers 

 should take their pupils to the hills and show them the valleys and 

 streams and mountains, and aid them in tracing out the general feat- 

 ures, so that they might make themselves geographers of the region 

 about them and lay a foundation for broader geographical study; that 

 the study of the geography of nature should precede that of man and po- 

 litical geography ; that maps showing in strong lines the reliefs, or the 

 mountains and plains, and then those showing the river systems and 

 other natural features, should come before thoseofStatesand towns. The 

 idea commended itself that each country should be presented to the 

 mind of the pupil by such groupings of prominent features, inanimate 

 and animate, as would, so far as possible, re-produce the reality of 

 nature ; and that waters, lands, and climates should not merely be de- 

 scribed, but also displayed in their mutual inter-actions and relations, 

 and in their inter-actions with the living tribes of the waters and land, 

 that thereby the activities of the earth and their varied consequences 

 might be understood, and also the influences thence arising that bear 

 on man and human history. 



These views he had learned from his teacher, Carl Ritter, and the 

 latter in part directly from Pestalozzi. They were so obviously good 

 that they spread rai)idly. Guyot was soon under appointment from the 

 Massachusetts board of education, lecturing on geography and methods 

 of instruction to the normal schools and teachers' institute; and this 

 engagement took him to all parts of the State and gave him each year, 

 for the six years he held the position, aggregate audiences of ],5()0 to 

 1,800 teachers. His friend Agassiz, moreover, was associated with him 

 in the work, giving a like and equally strong impulse to studies in 

 natural history. 



Guyot lived to see his methods of instruction become universal. He 

 furthered this end by preparing, on his plan, between the years 1861 

 aud 1875, a series of school geographies of different grades, six in num- 

 ber, ending in a school physical geography, and also a series of wall 

 maps, physical, political, and classical, thirty in number, all of which 

 passed into wide use.* These books forced the old books and atlases 

 to change about or succumb, and they led also to many imitations among 

 book-makers. 



His plan for the completion of the series in a general treatise on 

 physical geography, unfortunately, was never carried out. His failure 

 is to be attributed in part to the difficulty he felt in putting his ideas 



* Guyot had a valuable aid in map-making iu his nephew, Mr. E. Sandoz, who came 

 to America with him, after having previously spent two years at Gotha with the 

 geographer and publisher, Herr Petermann. 



