206 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIV. No. 345. 



expression, I can only stop here to notice 

 tliat in education this member has but re- 

 cently passed its culmination. The leading 

 American geography of twenty- five years 

 ago, on account of its many excellencies 

 •called by Col. Francis Parker in 1894 

 ^ the best geography in English ever 

 issued,' touched the highwater mark of 

 topography. Its map questions on the 

 continent of South America required a 

 knowledge by the pupil of 9 capes, 48 cities 

 and 30 rivers. The boy who knew his les- 

 son in Guyot could tell you that the lead- 

 ing afflaents of the Orinoco are the Ven- 

 ture, Coroni, Auraca, Meta, and Guaviari 

 rivers. To-day the pupil in Frye escapes 

 from South America with a burden of but 

 1 cape, 11 rivers and 25 cities, a total of 

 37 place-names of these three kinds, as 

 against the 87 which his father learned in 

 Guyot. 



The space saved by this shrinkage is 

 largely given in recent texts to the physical 

 side of the subject. Our '■ advanced ' or 

 '■ complete ' school geographies open with a 

 compend of physical geography, and a 

 wealth of physiographic material is scat- 

 tered with free hand throughout the text. 

 In the high-school our science is commonly 

 reviewed as a distinct study. 



In its opening chapter on the geography 

 of the planet, physical geography borrows 

 freely from astronomy. Its view-point, 

 however, is geocentric. Its astronomy is 

 planetary, not sidereal. No fact nor theory 

 is introduced except in direct and impor- 

 tant relations to the earth. 



The geography of the air is practically 

 conterminous from our standpoint with 

 meteorology. It makes drafts on the ele- 

 mentary principles of physics. It every- 

 where introduces the causal notion. Both 

 the physical and the purely geographical 

 contents are indispensable, and it would be 

 futile to attempt to isolate either. 



Under whatever name meteorology is 



taught, it should have a large place in school 

 programs, so many and so vital are our re- 

 lations to this ocean of air at whose bottom 

 we dwell, so fundamental are its effects on 

 land forms, so immediate are its controls of 

 the distribution of life. Few studies offer 

 so good facilities for scientific observation. 

 The apparatus it requires is inexpensive. 

 The daily reading of its instruments, the 

 search for the causes of to-day's weather 

 changes and the effort to predict those of 

 to-morrow, give training of high value. The 

 school becomes in a way a member of a 

 corps of scientific observers, since it receives 

 each morning the records of the work of 

 the Weather Service to compare with its 

 own. Indeed, so valuable is meteorology 

 as an educational instrument that it surely 

 will win place as a distinct study in the 

 high-school. 



The geography of the sea is of minor im- 

 portance to our subject, and we may pass 

 at once to the pith of physical geography, 

 the geography of the land, the science of 

 land forms, or geomorphology, as it is tech- 

 nically and rather lengthily termed. It is 

 here that our science presents the largest 

 range and variety of phenomena. It is 

 here that its relations to life are most direct 

 and complex. So central is this portion of 

 geography that all other divisions may be 

 grouped about it in subordinate relations 

 and the whole thus attain organization 

 and unity. The geography of the planet, 

 the sea and the air are prerequisite to the 

 geography of the land, since it is by the 

 action of the mobile envelopes that the 

 forms of the lithosphere have been sculp- 

 tured, while the applications of these physi- 

 cal conditions lead directly into the biotic 

 and anthropic divisions. 



It is not strange, therefore, that with the 

 organization of the science the study of 

 land forms has taken a large place. It is 

 called by Penck ' the main part of geography 

 proper.' The masterly treatise of de Lap- 



