PROGRESS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 499 



latest addition to the past and that the past is only the integration 

 of a vast series of ancient presents. 



All these present physical activities, even if carried down to stfch 

 specialties as potamology and kumatology, are so closely associated 

 with the standard subjects of geography that it is difficult and unad- 

 visable to cut them asunder. Yet every one of them may be carried 

 to such a degree of detail as to stand apart and gain rank as an inde- 

 pendent study. The accuracy of the geodesist, the minuteness of the 

 mineralogist, the high flights of the meteorologist, have now gone so 

 far in their special development as to lead far away from each other, 

 when they are studied for themselves, however closely their more 

 general results may be associated. 



When, however, we study the inorganic features of the earth not 

 as independent phenomena, but as elements of organic environment, 

 they all belong strictly in physical geography, or physiography. 

 Parenthetically let me say that I regret the excessive breadth given 

 to this term by British students, and the narrowness imposed upon 

 it by those Americans who would limit it to the study of the lands. 

 When we pursue the subdivisions of physiography, nomenclature 

 becomes incomplete. Climatology is unique in being a name for the 

 study of the atmosphere in so far as it determines organic environ- 

 ment; economic geology is a study of useful minerals and rocks, but is 

 less strictly treated as an objective subdivision of physiography than 

 is climatology, and there is associated with it so much of ingeniousness 

 and artifice in the exploitation and treatment of mineral products 

 that we are apt to put the cart before the horse and think that we 

 make gold or coal serve our needs, instead of realizing that we make 

 ingenious use in money and fuel of the properties that gold and 

 coal possess, just as we make use of moving air in windmills, and of 

 falling water in factories. 



There are no special names for the phenomena of oceans or of the 

 other divisions of physiography, considered as elements of organic 

 environment, and there is perhaps no need of such names; yet I hold 

 that it is desirable and even important to recognize the two ways in 

 which the inorganic features of the earth may be studied : either for 

 themselves, without regard to their controls over organic life; or as 

 elements of an inhabited planet, with continuous attention to the 

 controls that they exert over the inhabitants. 



When we come to the organic inhabitants of the earth, it is evident 

 that they fall under biology when studied for themselves, and that 

 they may be divided under botany and zoology, and subdivided as 

 often as desired. This is manifestly true as well of fossils as of living 

 forms. When, on the other hand, the inhabitants of the earth are 

 studied with respect to the responses that they have made to their 

 inorganic or physiographic environment, they are appropriately 



