August 9, 1901.] 



SCIENCE. 



209 



fluence our higli-school courses sooner or 

 later. It is in this somewhat remote field 

 that the deciding factor may be found which 

 shall at last settle the matter as to whether 

 the physiognomy of the land be chiefly 

 taught in secondary schools as geology or 

 as geography. 



Fortunately certain criticisms of each 

 science have been laid by recent educational 

 progress. In view of our present text- 

 books, physical geography can no longer be 

 called ' hash ' nor can geology now be 

 termed dry and dull. Neither of these 

 earth sciences is dull except to the dullard. 

 So large is the place of land forms in both 

 the new physical geography and the new 

 geology, that it is now a question of approach 

 to a common content of knowledge. 



Let me claim for geology the easier path 

 of approach, the clearer and more natural 

 method of presentation, the greater coher- 

 ence and the vaster and more inspiring 

 view. 



The geological path is that of process. It 

 studies the agents now in operation with 

 the resulting structures and forms that are 

 produced at each stage of the evolutionary 

 cycle. It thus binds together cause and 

 effect as closely as possible. It admits an 

 inductive treatment based on the observa- 

 tion of common things. The geographical 

 path is normally that of form. In many of 

 our physical geographies this has been 

 avoided and the geological approach 

 frankly taken in its stead, this portion of 

 the subject becoming an epitome of dynamic 

 geology. It is perhaps owing to the 

 personal equation that to me the method of 

 classification by form seems somewhat mis- 

 cellaneous and scrappy. It throws together, 

 for example, phenomena as diverse genetic- 

 ally as the glacial plains of Iowa, the base 

 plains of Eussia, the lava fields of Oregon, 

 the old lake floor of the Red Eiver of the 

 North, and the coastal plains of the Gulf. 

 Supan is compelled by his method of arrange- 



ment to take up the glacier under three of 

 the five great divisions of his Physical 

 Geography — under the atmosphere where 

 the general description is given, under the 

 Dynamics and under the Morphology of 

 the Lands. There is no question of the 

 value of such a classification to the advanced 

 student. Is it as good for the high- school 

 pupil as that of geology, which, in the case of 

 the glacier, for example, draws from mete- 

 orology the climatic conditions, and from 

 geography the description of its features, 

 and then proceeds forthwith to treat of its 

 work as a geological agent and of the land 

 forms thus produced ? It is perhaps because 

 of the easier path and better method which 

 geology offers that in the courses at Cornell 

 University, N. Y., a year in it precedes the 

 year offered in physical geography. 



Geology also gives what a painter would 

 term atmosphere to this common body of 

 knowledge. It sets it in perspective. To 

 an extent this is also done by physical 

 geography, and I confess that I have been 

 surprised to see how readily students of re- 

 cent texts, such as Davis's, gain a realization 

 of the time-element in the geographical 

 cycle, though they have had no geological 

 preparation. But these conceptions are 

 enlarged and vivified by the detailed study 

 of geologic time. It is well to know the 

 geography of the Allegheny mountains, it is 

 better still to know their morphogeny, but 

 it is best of all to set the whole in geolog- 

 ical perspective, to view their folding in the 

 remote close of the Palseozoic, and their 

 long waste during the Middle Age of geology 

 to a plain whose gradual dissection after 

 uplift and during subsequent cycles has 

 sculptured these mountains to the forms we 

 behold to-day. 



It is also something to set to the credit 

 of geology that it teaches the history of or- 

 ganic evolution. Perhaps we have not as 

 yet learned to paint the panorama of 

 creation so that its salient features are not 



