628 PHYSIOGRAPHY 



that has come to him, whether of fact, or theory, or suggestion, and 

 give it a place in his systematically classified records. 



In the physical geographies on our library shelves, in books of 

 travel, in transactions of learned societies, etc., pertaining to the era 

 preceding the time when physical geography became a science, there 

 are numerous records of facts, concealed, perhaps, in part in dreary 

 cosmogonies and exuberant theories, which in many instances are 

 of exceptional value because, in part, of the date at which they were 

 observed. One of the leading ideas in scientific geographical study 

 is the recognition of the wide-reaching principle that changes are 

 everywhere in progress. Many, if not all, of the changes referred to 

 have an orderly sequence, and constitute what may be suggestively 

 termed life-histories. In writing the biographies of various features 

 of the earth's surface the observations made a century, or many 

 centuries, ago have a peculiar, and in some instances an almost 

 priceless value, because of the light they furnish as to the sequence 

 of events. In this and yet other ways, the records left by past gen- 

 erations of geographical explorers contain valuable legacies. In 

 attempting to winnow the wheat from the chaff of physical geo- 

 graphy, the physiographer should avoid the conceit of youth, and 

 fully recognize the work of the bold and hardy pioneers who blazed 

 the way for the more critical and better-equipped investigators 

 who came later. 



Nomenclature 



One of the reasons for the slow growth of knowledge concerning 

 the earth's surface during the centuries that have passed was the fact 

 that the objects which claimed attention were, to a great extent, 

 designated by terms derived from popular usage. The language of 

 geography, in large part of remote antiquity, was adopted from the 

 parlance of sailors, hunters, and others in the humbler walks of life, 

 and retained its original looseness of meaning. The change from 

 geographical description to scientific analysis, which marked the 

 birth of physiography, necessitated greater precision in the use of 

 words. This change is not yet complete, and physiography is still 

 hampered in its growth and usefulness by a lack of concrete terms 

 in which tersely and accurately to state its results. In the nomen- 

 clature of physiography to-day the words inherited from physical 

 geography by far outnumber the technical terms since introduced, 

 and to a large extent still retain the indefiniteness and lack of pre- 

 cision that characterize the multiple sources from which they were 

 adopted. One of the pressing duties of the scientific student of the 

 earth's surface, and one which on account of its many difficulties 

 may well be reckoned among the physiographic problems of to-day, 

 is the giving of fixed and precise meanings to the words employed in 



