REVIEWS 515 
Plains, plateaus, and mountains as topographic types are considered in 
order, and many illustrations of the various phases of these general 
types, drawn from all parts of the world, are introduced. ‘The treat- 
ment of coastal plains is especially happy. The question might be 
raised whether the idea of the coastal plain is not carried rather far 
when, under the heading of “Ancient Coastal Plains,” areas very dis- 
tant from the sea, and which now have nothing to suggest their 
‘“‘coastal”’ relations, are discussed. Thus “ the ancient coastal plains” 
of Wisconsin seem to us a little remote for consideration in an ele- 
mentary physical geography. The teacher who is a geologist as well as 
a geographer will know how to treat this subject ; but it seems to us 
likely that the text will fail to convey the right notion of these ‘“‘ancient 
coastal plains,” which are no longer coastal plains, to many pupils if 
not to many teachers. 
The important chapters on Rivers and Valleys is excellent, and 
should prove effective with classes if they have the guidance of skillful 
teachers. 
A significant chapter of the volume is entitled Climatic Control of 
Land Forms. Here are considered such topics as the effect of climate 
on streams and their work; salt lakes; the life of arid regions ; glaciers 
and ice-sheets and their work. It must be confessed that the fashion- 
ing of the land surface by the continental ice-sheet of North America 
seems doubtfully placed in a chapter with the above title, for while 
glaciation was of course a result of the climate of the time, the topog- 
raphy which the ice fashioned is as really the work of the ice as the 
topography developed by rivers is their work ; and it can hardly be said 
that glaciers and ice-sheets are more directly controlled by climate 
than rivers are. The discussion of glacial topography under the cap- 
tion of Climatic Control of Land Forms, therefore, seems to us not 
the happiest possible arrangement. The volume closes with an excel- 
lent chapter on Shore Lines. Numerous brief appendices are added 
which will be helpful to the teacher of the subject. 
Throughout the volume emphasis is laid on the effects of geogra- 
phy on human development, and references to historical incidents, as 
influenced by topography, are frequent. This is a phase of the subject 
which is most welcome. 
In a book which is so thoroughly good it may seem gratuitous to 
mention defects, but there is one which seems to us somewhat serious. 
There is an occasional lapse into an obscure style, resulting from the 
