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SCIENCE. 



[,N. S. Vol. XIX. No. 474. 



causes and consequences to the classes in 

 which they belong. If to these two habits 

 we add a third, namely, that of making a 

 careful arrangement of the classes in a 

 reasonable and serviceable order, we shall 

 have taken three important steps in geo- 

 graphical progress, and, as a result, geog- 

 raphy will flourish. 



There is no device by which the work of 

 the specialist is so helpfully relieved of its 

 narrowing influence as by the simple de- 

 vice of looking always for the general geo- 

 graphical relations of any special topic. 

 The specialist in the geographical study of 

 ocean currents, of caverns or of deltas, of 

 forests, of trade routes or of cities, should 

 not lessen his attention to his chosen line 

 of work, but he should, often to his great 

 advantage, increase his attention to the 

 place that his chosen subject holds in the 

 whole content of geography. Not only will 

 his work be broadened in this way, but 

 both he and his work will be brought into 

 closer relations with the whole body of 

 geographers and the whole content of geog- 

 raphy, and the possibility of organizing a 

 society of mature geographical experts will 

 be thereby greatly increased. If the geo- 

 graphical relations of a special topic are 

 not looked for, the specialist fails to that 

 extent of becoming a geographer. The cli- 

 matologist who studies the physical condi- 

 tions of the atmosphere for their own sake, 

 the oceanographer who makes no applica- 

 tion of the physical features of the ocean 

 as controls of organic consequences, the 

 geomorphist who is satisfied with the study 

 of land forms as a finality, the student of 

 the location of cities and the boundaries 

 of states who makes no search for the ex- 

 planation of his facts as afEected by physi- 

 ographic controls— these specialists may 

 all be eminent in their own lines, but they 

 fall short of being geographers. In the 

 same way it might be shown that a petrog- 

 rapher who makes no study of field rela- 



tions and discovers no results of processes 

 and no sequences in time, fails of being a 

 geologist, for geology deals essentially with 

 processes and structures in time sequence; 

 likewise a chronologist who is satisfied with 

 mere dates of occurrence fails of being a 

 historian, for history involves the meaning 

 as well as the mere sequence of human 

 events. There is, of course, no blame to 

 be attached to interest in specialization, no 

 praise to an interest in larger relations; 

 it is merely a matter of fact that the iso- 

 lated specialist remains somewhat to one 

 side of the larger sciences with Avhieh he 

 might become associated. On , the other 

 hand, the geographer is not necessarily so 

 broad-minded that he must be shallow; he 

 may specialize deeply on the climatologie, 

 oceanographic, geomorphic, topographic, 

 organic divisions of his subject; but if he 

 wishes to be considered a geographer he 

 should cultivate all the geographic rela- 

 tions into which the facts of his chosen 

 division enters, and he will find that it is 

 largely through these relations that he as- 

 sociates himself profitably with other geog- 

 raphers. 



Two of the most beneficial results of the 

 systematic study of geography are the 

 great increase in the number of classes or 

 types with which the geographer becomes 

 familiar, and the great improvement in the 

 definition of these types. This is partic- 

 ularly the case with those types which con- 

 tain many individual examples, such as 

 rivers and cities, and which are, therefore, 

 capable of division into many headings. 

 So long as the geographer deals only with 

 things in an empirical fashion, he may be 

 satisfied with a rough classification; as 

 soon as he begins to treat his problems 

 more carefully, his classification becomes 

 more refined and he has relatively more 

 to do with classes of things than with the 

 things themselves. The things are actual, 

 the classes are ideal, and therein lies one 



