494 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1919. 
It is therefore apparent that not only in the schools but in the field 
of business as well, geography is now recognized as belonging in the 
field of research. It has outlived the stubborn prejudice that there 
was nothing in it beyond a purely elementary discipline. 
As geography is enriched with new and rational material, geo- 
graphical discovery is taking on a new meaning. Much that is even 
now on the map with a fair degree of accuracy must be rediscovered 
and so interpreted as to lead to real knowledge of it and the highest 
uses of it. 
While some ancients, notably Strabo, had penetrating notions as 
to the origin and meaning of features of physical geography, we are 
most interested to know now how far Herodotus, for example, and 
Eratosthenes and Strabo and Ptolemy knew the world of their time 
in Europe, Asia, and Africa. So in the era of modern explorations 
from Prince Henry to Columbus, Magellan, Capt. Cook, Livingston, 
Richthofen, Lewis and Clarke, Peary, Scott, and Amundsen—they 
taught us in the sphere of quantity—it was expansive geography in 
large part, with quality and substance as incidental elements. Now 
we seek intensive geography; quality is the main thing, and relations 
are paramount. We interrogate relief, climate, vegetation, animal 
life, fruits, grains, minerals, and soils as they are used by man or 
might be used by man. 
We seek for causes and effects; in other words, we demand to know 
what the geographic influences are, both for the intellectual satisfac- 
tion of knowing and for the concrete purpose of conforming life to 
conditions with the least waste and the most profit. 
Related to this new aspect of discovery and study of regions is a 
new and serious intellectual equipment for travel. Most men have 
traveled very much as one goes 20 miles to market, or as a child wan- 
ders in the field on a vacation day. The rather aimless pastime of 
chasing butterflies, gathering chestnuts, or picking wild berries is 
well, but the mature traveler must now do more. He must take much 
with him, that he may bring back more. The “ White Cattle” and 
the “ Dog’s Palace” may suffice the new rich to have seen on the 
plains of the Po and in Venice, but the real traveler will absorb and 
bring back Italy as a unit of environment, shaping a human group 
in its ways and works for two or three millenniums. 
~ Such work will not of necessity be done formally or pedantically, 
or be shaped by dry rule, but by a trained geographic vision which 
knows mountain and plain, climate and soils, products and people, 
a spirit that asks and in some measure sees why things are as 
they are. 
Some measure of this intensive and causal knowledge of nations 
and of the world is needed by all and is highly important to all 
public teachers and to all who are, or who aspire to become states- 
