72 W. M. Davis — Geographic Teaching. 



what school boy ever hears our coastal rivers thus simply and 

 rationally characterized? Look at the sprawling outline of 

 Greece, and ask our classical scholars if they describe it as a 

 rugo-ed mountainous region standing in the Mediterranean up 

 to its knees ; and yet how effective is the homely comparison ! 



It is the same with the results of glacial action. The text 

 books of geography are practically silent on this important 

 topic ; yet many features of glacial origin must be known in 

 fact to every boy who has rambled through the woods on his 

 half holidays. Our gravel ridges and mounds and our sand 

 plains may be reckoned as characteristic of our home geography 

 as Lowell's " Bigelow Papers " are of Yankee dialect. It is a 

 pity that they are not duly mentioned in our schools and com- 

 pared with that suggestive fund of fresh material brought by 

 Russell from Alaska and so honorably associated with the name 

 of our society. The comparison that may be drawn here is as 

 fair as that instituted already between New England and the 

 plateau of the middle Rhine, but the two comparisons are of 

 different kinds. The comparison of the two plateaus associates 

 distant regions that are now alike. The comparison of New 

 England and Alaska employs the present of the latter region to 

 illustrate the past of the former ; and this style of comparison 

 is extremely suggestive in geographic study. 



For several years past, some of my more advanced students 

 have chosen as subjects for their theses the physical geography 

 of various states with which they were more or less familiar 

 irom residence or field observation, or with which they wished 

 to become familiar. They have thus had occasion to search the 

 literature of each state for accounts of its physical features, and 

 the search has generally been without large reward . The practice 

 has been useful, but the product has not been great. It is this 

 want of material that convinces me that nothing less than the 

 direct exploration of our home country, with the single object 

 of investigating its topographical development, will secure the 

 facts that are now needed in geographical teaching ; and thus 

 we return to the general question that was laid aside while 

 sputhern New Eugiand was before us. 



It is of course impossible in the limits of this address to give a 

 full statement of the scheme of systematic geography, the ap- 

 preciation of which seems to me essential in the desired explora- 

 tion and investigation; but there are two leading principles 



