August 4, 1922] 



SCIENCE 



131 



School of Geography is fully established; and 

 with such a beginning it may be difficult to 

 establish a Graduate School of the kind I have 

 outlined. The college professors of geography 

 ■will themselves wish to have some time for 

 oi'iginal studies; some of them will wish to give 

 graduate instruction. And thus even if one or 

 two research professors are added, a half- 

 developed Graduate School of Geography may 

 grow up, in which research is only incidental 

 and secondary, and teaching of an under- 

 graduate grade is the larger duty. 



The very respectability of such an arrange- 

 ment is ominous. It will be so good that a 

 better arrangement, a real professional school 

 of geography may be lost sight of; and yet a 

 mixed school of that sort will only be "an- 

 other" school of the mixed kind; and being 

 attached to a small university instead of to a 

 large one it will have no particular merits; it 

 will not stand out with preeminence of its own. 

 As I am only a commencement speaker and not 

 a trustee, my duty goes no farther than to 

 point out this threatening danger : it will be for 

 others to provide safeguards against it. I may 

 however note in passing that although a num- 

 ber of other universities have already reached 

 the stage of offering geographical instruction 

 in both their undergraduate and graduate de- 

 partments, none of them thinks it worth while 

 to segregate the graduate part of such instruc- 

 tion under so ambitious a name as a Graduate 

 Seihool of Geography; and I believe that they 

 are quite right in not doing so because they do 

 not propose, for the present at least, to pro- 

 vide opportunity for advanced work in geogi'a- 

 phy so far in excess of that provided in other 

 subjects as to warrant the announcement of a 

 School of Geography. It is here that the op- 

 portunity for geography in Clark University 

 is likely to be for a long time unique; because 

 in this university geography is, if I understand 

 the plans, of the trustees correctly, to be given 

 as great pre-eminence over other subjects of 

 graduate study as possible. It can not reach 

 great pre-eminence immediately, for as I have 

 already pointed out it is not possible immedi- 

 ately to secure a staff of research professors. 

 The unique feature of geographical oppor- 

 tunity at Clark is therefore the aim in view; 



namely, to establish a real Graduate School of 

 Geography as soon as possible. The recent ap- 

 pointment of a geographer to the presidency 

 of the university is evidence of the seriousness 

 with which this aim is regarded by the trustees. 

 They have my heartiest good wishes for their 

 success, but it is evident that success can not 

 be reached if the research professors in the 

 Graduate School are distracted from their 

 proper work by the necessity of giving under- 

 graduate instruction. 



Undergraduate Preparation fob Graduate 

 Work 



There is a second danger about as serious 

 as the fu'st. Properly qualified members of a 

 properly constituted Graduate School of Geog- 

 raphy ought not only to have already acquired 

 a good understanding of fundamental under- 

 graduate courses in geography; they should 

 also have acquired a good understanding of 

 some one or two other subjects allied to those 

 systematic divisions of geogi-aphy in which they 

 propose to specialize. The requisite under- 

 graduate courses in geography itself should rep- 

 resent several of the chief systematic divisions 

 of geographical science; for example, land and 

 water forms, climatology, human geography, 

 economic geography; and also one or two intro- 

 ductory courses in regional geography, for ex- 

 ample. North America and some other con- 

 tinent. These taken together should constitute 

 the equivalent of a whole year's undergraduate 

 work at least. But in addition thereto, a stu- 

 dent who proposes to specialize in one or an- 

 other division of systematic geography should 

 have made good undergraduate progress in 

 some other subject closely allied to that divi- 

 sion. 



Thus one who specializes in human geogi-aphy 

 should have taken several undergi-aduate 

 courses in the allied subject of history on one 

 hand, or in anthropology and ethnology on the 

 other. A student who proposes to specialize 

 in economic geogi'aphy should be well prepared 

 in the allied subject of economics; and one 

 who selects plant geography or animal geog- 

 raphy for his special subject of preference, 

 should be well grounded in the allied subject 

 of botany or zoology; and so on. These aUied 

 subjects should occupy from half a year to a 



