550 ISRAEL C. RUSSELL 



ress, the problems that confront the physiographer are not only what 

 far-reaching changes in the surface condition of the land result there- 

 from, but how the ruin wrought can be repaired, and how human 

 advancement can be continued and its deleterious consequences on 

 the fundamental conditions to which it owes its birth and develop- 

 ment be avoided or lessened. Considerations which lessen the horrors 

 of the regions crossed by industrial armies are that nature, no matter 

 how severely torn, has great recuperative power and tends to heal her 

 wounds; and also that man, through the science of agriculture par- 

 ticularly, although greatly modifying natural conditions, is able to 

 reconstruct his environment and, so long as intelligent care is exer- 

 cised, adjust it to his peculiar needs. In the relations of physiography 

 to man, as the above hasty sketch is intended to show, the themes for 

 research are many and important. As a suggestive summary, they 

 include the review of history with the aid that modernized physical 

 geography furnishes; the recognition of a strong undercurrent due to 

 inorganic conditions in the political, social, and industrial develop- 

 ment of peoples; the incorporation of physiographic laws into the 

 formulas used by the engineer in all of his far-reaching plans; the 

 calling of a halt in the wanton destruction of the beauties of nature, 

 and the providing of a check on the greed of man which casts a baneful 

 shadow on future generations. Great as are the results to be expected 

 from a better knowledge of the mode of origin of the earth, its defor- 

 mation by internal changes, and the removal and redeposition of 

 material by forces resident on its surface, the combined results of all 

 these studies culminate in the relation of man to his environment. 



Israel C. Russell. 



University of Michigan. 



