RELATION OF GEOGRAPHY TO THE SCIENCES 55 



holds to the allied engineering professions, or that the president of a 

 syndicate holds to one of its component, yet semi-independent, corpo- 

 rations. It is an administrative or correlating department, yet at times 

 lending its knowledge of the specialty from which it springs to the 

 development of kindred branches in the world's work. 



And this brings us to another division of the subject — the place of 

 geography in education — which, it seems, must be considered in this 

 discussion. The teaching of geography in the more advanced grades 

 should be so planned as to direct observation to the various natural 

 features and physical phenomena, and to the reaction of this environ- 

 ment on man and his occupations. It should also give attention to 

 the recording of such features in the form of concise and systematic 

 reports. The civil or mining engineer, lawyer, historian, promoter of 

 financial and commercial undertakings, geologist, ethnologist, biolo- 

 gist, meteorologist, and persons engaged in kindred professional 

 occupations, are constantly called upon to conduct investigations and 

 to submit reports which require a preliminary description of the 

 natural features and the arts of the region under consideration. 



An examination of the great government survey reports, the works 

 of historians, or the projects of civil engineers will disclose the value 

 of higher geographic training. A large proportion of our civil and 

 mining engineers have, at some period in their careers, had to investi- 

 gate and report upon projects in localities little known. The writer is 

 one of hundreds who have made preliminary surveys for railways, irri- 

 gation projects, or plans for river and harbor improvement, or for the 

 development of mineral resources in Mexico, China, British America, 

 portions of our far West, or in better-known and better-developed parts 

 of the earth. Their reports to the stockholders of the companies or 

 other employers, if consisting only of a brief statement of the engi- 

 neering problems immediately involved, furnish few of the data 

 necessary to enable the projectors of such enterprises to determine the 

 financial possibilities or to estimate the resources of the region. But 

 such reports convey an entirely different meaning and show the pro- 

 jects in an entirely different light when preceded by a concise state- 

 ment of the geography, including an account of the climate ; the water 

 resources for power, irrigation, or domestic use ; the timber resources ; 

 the geology, especially the stone available for structural purposes ; 

 the nature of the physical wealth ; the biology, including the useful 

 flora and fauna, wild or domestic ; and the ethnology, especially the 



