52 THE FIRST YEARBOOK 



geography, and of Freeman, who has shown it to be the most impor- 

 tant factor in the history of nations. 



The student will thus discover that geography is not merely a 

 patchwork of other sciences, but that, as a rule, each geographer is a 

 specialist, who, while indicating the relations of his favorite specialty 

 to the other sciences, magnifies his own, be it geology as with Suess, 

 ethnology as with Reclus, political geography as with Ratzel, historical 

 geography as with Tozer, or commercial geography as with Gonner. 



So it has ever been with each of the more restricted sciences. Not so 

 very long ago geologists based their lore on biology, and palaeontology 

 was the keystone of their theories and their measure of time. They 

 then took up the dynamics of geology and founded their pet theories 

 on vulcanism. Now they have become geomorphologists, and the 

 surface or physiographic forms, as produced chiefly by erosive action, 

 are the key by which they unlock hidden mysteries. The lithologic 

 composition of the rocks, revealed by the microscope, furnishes their 

 basis of classification and measure of time. Hence the modern school 

 of geologists, recognizing the geographic (topographic) side of their 

 science, are trenching so closely on the domain of what they conceive 

 to be geography that many of them have come to believe, as do some 

 historians, meteorologists, and ethnologists, that the science of geogra- 

 phy has ceased to exist. 



This brings us to a realization of how imperfectly the true mean- 

 ing of the term "geography" is as yet understood, not only in our own 

 country, but even in Germany, the most advanced of all countries in 

 geographic teaching. It is the geologists whom we must gratefully 

 credit with having forced the issue, through mistaking one of the com- 

 ponents of geography, namely topography, for the whole, and thus 

 limiting the science to its orographic phase. This is clearly shown in 

 the statement made before this association last year by Professor W. 

 H. Norton, who aptly characterized the new geologic cult, geomor- 

 phology, as "the child of geology and geography," and who properly 

 decided that "the overlap land of geomorphology may be claimed by 

 geology with as sure a right as any of its other provinces, such as 

 palaeontology." If we substitute here for "geography" the name 

 intended, "topography," and also in his question, "Should land forms 

 be taught in high schools chiefly as physical geography or as geology?" 

 substitute for "physical geography" "topography," we arrive at a true 

 conception of the difficulties raised by topographic geologists, if I 



