PHYSIOGRAPHIC PROBLEMS OF TODAY.^ 



In looking ahead and endeavoring to see in what ways our knowl- 

 edge of the earth's surface can be increased, the fact should be borne 

 in mind that physiography is one of the younger of the sciences. In 

 truth, the new geography, or physiography as it has been christened, 

 is of such recent birth that its limits and its relationship to other 

 sciences are as yet in part, indefinite. Accepting the conservative 

 view, that physiographers should confine their studies to the earth's 

 surface, but have freedom to investigate the causes producing changes 

 of that surface, whether coming from without or arising from forces 

 at work within the earth, my task is to suggest ways in which man's 

 knowledge of his dwelling-place may be enlarged. 



INHERITANCES. 



Although the scientific study of the earth's surface can with suffi- 

 cient accuracy be said to be less than a century old, and to have 

 attained the greater part of its growth during the past half-century, 

 the fact must be freely admitted that, preceding the recognition of 

 physiography as one of the sisterhood of sciences, there was a long 

 period of preparation during which man's physical environment, and 

 the many changes to which it is subject, attracted attention and 

 awakened interest. The more or less general and diffuse descriptions 

 of the earth's surface embraced under the term "physical geography," 

 when vivified by the idea of evolution, became the more definite and 

 concrete physiography of today. Physiography from this point of 

 view may perhaps be justly designated as scientific physical geography. 

 New thoughts grafted on the previously vigorous stem have borne 

 rich fruits, but in many instances inherit much of their flavor from 

 the original trunk. One of the important duties of the physiographer 

 is to select all that is of value from the inheritance that has come to 

 him, whether of fact, or theory, or suggestion and give it a place in his 

 systematically classified records. 



I Read before the section of Physiography, International Congress of Arts and 

 Science, Universal Exposition, St. Louis, September 21, 1904. 



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