56 
placed the subject on an equal footing with the other sciences which have 
for years found a respected place in the college curriculum. That this 
fact is being recognized beyond the walls of the university must be ad-. 
mitted when we see a number of the larger cities of the country employing 
specialists to instruct their teaching force and familiarize them with a 
rational method of teaching. I am informed that the city of Indianapolis 
has employed a well-trained man for this specific purpose. This is a 
step taken in the right direction. Moreover, about all the commissioned 
high schools of the State have placed physical geography on the schedule 
of studies, although in many cases but a short period is devoted to the 
subject. These facts point to the conclusion that physical geography has 
gained a deserved place in the public schools, and, moreover, with due 
recognition, it is destined to play as important a role as any of its allies 
as an educative science because of its recognized disciplinary value. 
Let us look for a moment at some of the recent methods of teaching 
the subject. Ten years ago it was all sufficient for the student to describe 
a geographical element, or simply to accumulate facts. If the student 
knew all the capes oh the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and their locations, 
nothing more was to be learned about them. The question was not asked 
why any geographical element should appear here or there, why this or 
that territorial limit of topographical expression should exist; it was suffi- 
ecient to be able to know the fact of its existence, location and general 
features without calling for an explanation. Such knowledge is empirical. 
The serious student is no longer satisfied with empirical description, 
but he demands explanatory description. It is in this particular 
phase that marked advancement has been made. Empirical description 
is rapidly giving way to rational explanation of geographical phenomena. 
The absence of an educative discipline in the former, and its necessary 
inherence in the latter, fully accounts for the recent growth of the so- 
ealled new geography. ‘Thus, rational geography demands not only the 
collection of facts by personal observation, but it also calls for an erplana- 
tion of the observed facts; such a process must employ comparison and 
deduction. Moreover, the conclusions reached or the method of explana- 
tion derived by comparison and deduction must explain not only all the 
facts at hand, but they must also account for many other related facts 
yet to be collected. It is only by the employment of these broad and 
fundamental principles that the accumulation of useful knowledge and, 
above all, a valuable mental discipline can be attained. 
