PHYSIOGRAPHIC PROBLEMS OF TODAY 525 



In the physical geographies on our Hbrary 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 suggestivelv 

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

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

 turies, ago have a peculiar, and in some instances an almost price- 

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

 events. In this and yet other ways the records left by past generations 

 of geographical explorers contain valuable legacies. In attempting 

 to winnow the wheat from the chaff of physical geography, the physi- 

 ographer 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, desig- 

 nated 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 nomenclature of 

 physiography today 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 precision that charac- 



