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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXI. No. 807 



photography^ or a reasonable expertness in 

 writing reports on various scales and in 

 various styles, and also a helpful handiness 

 in drawing diagrams. The only serious 

 point here to be settled by a practical 

 geographer is: are diagrams, foreign lan- 

 guages, photography, and riding, and so 

 on, really helpful in the kind of work that 

 he proposes to undertake ; if they are, then 

 he will as a matter of course set about 

 acquiring some degree of skill in each and 

 all of them. 



OBJECTIONS TO THE METHOD OP STEUCTUEE, 

 PEOCESS AND STAGE 



Allow me briefly to consider some of the 

 objections that have been urged against the 

 method of structure, process and stage in 

 the description of land forms. A German 

 geographer has regarded that part of the 

 method which involves the scheme of the 

 cycle of erosion as too rigid, and has likened 

 its use in the description of natural land- 

 scapes to the cramping of nature in a strait- 

 jacket. Such a criticism only indicates the 

 complete failure of the critic to apprehend 

 the method ; for it is essentially elastic and 

 adaptable ; much more so, I believe, than 

 any other method of description that has 

 been formulated. 



Some other critics have regarded the 

 method as too geological, because it requires 

 the consideration of underground struc- 

 tures and of past processes. This it cer- 

 tainly does require; nevertheless, it intro- 

 duces underground structures only so far 

 as they aid in the appreciation of visible 

 surface, forms ; and it introduces past proc- 

 esses only in so far as they aid in the 

 explanatory description of actual surface 

 features. In this respect, it is interesting 

 to note that, judging by my experience in 

 Germany a year ago (1908-09), the method 

 of structure, process and stage is much less 

 geological than the method of geographical 



description commonly employed by the 

 younger geographers at the University of 

 Berlin; for they habitually pi-esent past 

 geological conditions and processes as such, 

 and treat them as characteristic parts of 

 geographical reports, even though the 

 events thus brought in from the past bear 

 in no direct or helpful way on the features 

 of the present. Many interesting discus- 

 sions were held on this point, always with 

 the object of trying to emphasize the exist- 

 ing visible landscape as the object of a 

 geographer's work, and hence with the 

 wish to exclude every geological item, how- 

 ever interesting in itself, if it had no help- 

 ful bearing on the observable facts of 

 to-day. For example, I questioned the 

 value of the geological term, Triassic, in 

 the account of a certain district in Hesse; 

 my contention being that all a geographer 's 

 needs were satisfied when the composition, 

 structure, thickness and attitude of the 

 formation concerned were stated, without 

 regard to its date ; but German geographers 

 seemed to be in favor of including the 

 names of geological formations in geo- 

 graphical descriptions. The geologist of 

 course wishes to know the date of origin, 

 as well as the present structure and atti- 

 tude of the formations that make up a 

 district; but the geogi-apher has little or 

 no need of such historical information, 

 although it is extremely important for him 

 to know to what stage of erosion the dis- 

 trict concerned has advanced in one or in 

 several successive partial cycles. However, 

 this is a subordinate matter. 



An English geographer has expressed 

 some doubt as to whether the method of 

 structure, process and stage, which he 

 recognizes to be of value for the descrip- 

 tion of small districts, will prove service- 

 able for the description of large regions. 

 My own opinion on this point is that its 

 value for large regions can only be deter- 



