GROWTH OF GEOLOGY. 277 



this is tlie main line of the geographical argument. 

 In the language of Richthofen the earth's surface 

 and man are the terminal links." * 



It might seem as if geography had become a 

 compendium of the sciences and took all nature for 

 its province, but that is a misinterpretation of the 

 modern extension. The fact is that geography 

 is a synthesis of the results of many sciences in 

 relation to a special problem ; or it may be compared 

 to a central circle intersecting a cluster of other cir- 

 cles which represent physics, chemistry, astronomy, 

 geology, biology, anthropology, and so on. 



Alexander von Humboldt is ranked as one of the 

 founders of scientific geography, not merely because 

 of his explorations, or his method of representing 

 the relief of a country (e.g., Mexico) by cross sec- 

 tion, or his invention of isotherms, but because he 

 had the distinctively scientific virtue of seeing 

 things in their inter-relations. '^ Humboldt's Essai 

 politique sur la Nouvelle-Espagne, published in 

 1809, must take high rank among the efforts of the 

 new geography as the first complete description of 

 a land w^ith the aid of the modern methods. Here, 

 for the first time, we have an exhaustive attempt to 

 relate causally relief, climate, vegetation, fauna, and 

 the various human activities.'' f For that is geo- 

 graphy. 



But along with Humboldt there are others who 

 should be named, — Karl Ritter of Berlin (1779- 

 1859), "the greatest modern professor of geogra- 

 phy," author of the famous Erdhunde and founder 

 of a great school ; the cartographer Berghaus, 



* H. J. Mackinder. Address Section E, Rep. Brit. Ass.^ 

 1895, p. 739. 



t H. J. Mackinder. Log. cit. p. 741. 



