2 ANNALS NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



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FIELD PREPARATION 35 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 36 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 37 



WTK0DI7CTI0N 



The commanding position which New York City holds at the meeting 

 place of several distinctly different physiographic provinces (Fig. 2) has 

 occasionally been noted, and it is now the purpose of this paper to bring 

 together in a suggestive way a summary of the opportunities for study 

 thus provided for the teacher and student of physiography. How fortu- 

 nate are the teachers of physiography in this great city, in having at 

 hand in the near-by out-of-doors such a magnificent laboratory, or one 

 might say such a complete museum of land forms in all their bewildering 

 variety ! How fortunate we are in having these things within such easy 

 reach, not only because they invite us to take our classes into the field, 

 classes whose mental pictures of the world are those of city dwellers, but 

 even more because they cry out to us to avail ourselves of these unrivaled 

 opportunities to see things at first hand, to broaden our own conceptions 

 of our chosen subject, to attain the confidence in teaching which comes 

 from this wider outlook, and to be inspired by bringing us face to face 

 with the fascinating problems having to do with the origin of land forms. 



There are some cities of the United States situated out upon the plains 

 with miles and miles of undiversified country presenting hardly more 

 than one physiographic problem. How the physiographer must envy us 

 when he looks at a geological map of our area (Fig. 1) and realizes its 

 splendid location. There are a great many cities of our country not 

 situated upon the seaboard. They do not exhibit any of that infinite 

 host of forms expressing wave work, beaches and bars, spits and lagoons, 

 nor wave-cut cliffs; the physiographer cannot see a coastal plain at first 

 hand, nor may he see the immediate effects of change of sea level, either 

 those of uplift or those of drowning. Then consider all of our southern 

 cities, which are denied the features of glaciation, either of the local type 

 or of the continental type, such as are so perfectly expressed in our 

 immediate vicinity. 



And, moreover, we live in the heart of a great center of population 

 which has at its command unrivaled means of transportation in the form 

 of railroads, trolleys, river and ocean steamboats, and automobile roads 

 of superb quality. There are cities, towns, and villages everywhere offer- 

 ing us their hospitality. We are assured of a comfortable resting place 



