Januaey 22, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



127 



tent to act with the others in organizing 

 the congress for us, but the same result 

 would have been attained if delegates had 

 been asked from the various geological, 

 botanical, zoological and historical socie- 

 ties, for all these societies contain among 

 their members persons of a certain amount 

 of geographical knowledge and of a suffi- 

 cient executive ability. The same would 

 be true had delegates been invited from 

 the Boone and Crocket Club, a choice or- 

 ganization of sportsmen, for all such clubs 

 have men of undoubted ability in the way 

 of organization among their members, and 

 are largely concerned with matters of geo- 

 graphical location and distribution in their 

 activities. Nevertheless, neither the sport- 

 ing nor the outing clubs are essentially or 

 characteristically geographical in their ob- 

 jects. Do not, however, understand me to 

 object to the acceptance of delegates from 

 the above-named clubs as members of the 

 committee on management of the Interna- 

 tional Geographical Congress. I approve 

 of the plan heartily; for in the absence of 

 geographical societies in many parts of our 

 country there was no other plan so appro- 

 priate. The matter is mentioned here only 

 to show the straits to Avhich geographers 

 are reduced in attempting to give a na- 

 tional welcome to an international geo- 

 graphical congress; the difficulty, so far 

 as it is a difficulty, arises from the absence 

 among us of a body of mature geograph- 

 ical experts, united in an advanced ac- 

 quaintance with some large part of a well- 

 defined science. This condition of things 

 seems to me unsatisfactory. The absence 

 of a strong society of geographical experts 

 indicates an insufficient attention to scien- 

 tific geography, and I, therefore, now turn 

 to consider the direction in which serious 

 efforts may be most profitably made 

 toward a better condition of things. Let 

 it be understood, however, that no quick- 

 acting remedy is possible, for the reason 



that many of those concerned with the 

 problem— namely, the advance of scientific 

 geography — do not seem to recognize that 

 the existing state of things needs a remedy. 

 It is, therefore, only as a change of heart — 

 a scientific change of the geographic heart 

 —makes itself felt that much can be ac- 

 complished toward the development of sci- 

 entific geography, and such a change is 

 notoriously of slow accomplishment. Prog- 

 ress is apparent, however, and from prog- 

 ress we may gather encouragement. In 

 what direction, then, shall our further 

 efforts be turned? 



Let me urge, in the fii'st place, that close 

 scrutiny should be given to things that are 

 properly called geographical, with the 

 object of determining the essential content 

 of geographical science and of excluding 

 from our responsibility everything that is 

 not essentially geographic. Only in this 

 way can we clear the ground for the culti- 

 vation of really geographical problems in 

 geographical education and in geograph- 

 ical societies. This scrutiny should be ex- 

 ercised all along the line: in the prepara- 

 tion of text-books, in the training of teach- 

 ers, in the study of experts, and in the 

 conduct of any geographical society that 

 attempts to take a really scientific posi- 

 tion. The essential content of geograph- 

 ical science is so large that the successful 

 cultivation of the whole of it demands all 

 the energies of many experts. Those who 

 are earnestly engaged in cultivating geog- 

 raphy proper should treat non-geographic 

 problems in the same way that a careful 

 farmer would treat blades of grass in his 

 cornfield: he would treat them as weeds 

 and cut them out, for however useful grass 

 is in its own place, its growth in the corn- 

 field will weaken the growth of the corn. 

 So in the field of geographical study, there 

 is no room for both geography and history, 

 geography and geology, geography and 

 astronomy. Geography will never gain the 



