468 THE RATIONAL ELEMENT IN GEOGRAPHY 



Now it is curious that while geographical surveying has a well 

 recognized place as a technical art, and while geographical draw- 

 ing and modeling are understood to require well-trained skill, 

 there has been comparatively little conscious attention given to 

 training students in the geographical description of land forms. 

 There can be no question that the latter art more generally de- 

 serves cultivation than the others, for speech is heard and books 

 are read upon geographical subjects more often than maps, mod- 

 els, and pictures are consulted; yet practical instruction and exer- 

 cise in the description of land forms are seldom made part of 

 school or college teaching. Perhaps it is for this reason that 

 books of travel so generally fail to give their readers a clear idea 

 of the regions with which they are concerned. As a means of 

 correcting this error of omission, practical exercises should be in- 

 troduced in connection with recitations or lectures in physical 

 geography — physiography — and serious emphasisshould belaid 

 on the translation into words of the facts observed either directly 

 on the face of nature during field excursions or upon models, 

 maps, and pictures in the laboratory. 



When the attempt is made to describe geographical forms in 

 spoken or written language three classes of more or less technical 

 terms may be employed, as was shown by Penck in a communi- 

 cation to the Sixth International Geographical Congress in Lon- 

 don, 1895. One class is empirical and well rooted in our language 

 including such nouns as hill and mountain for smaller and larger 

 eminences, ridge and valley for elongated elevations or depres- 

 sions, as well as many adjectives of geometrical association, such 

 as precipitous, steep, rolling, level, and so on. Another class in- 

 troduces phrases suggesting a relation between structure and form, 

 and these phrases are all modern, such as monoclinal ridge, anti- 

 clinal mountain, synclinal valley, and so on. A third class em- 

 ploys terms that imply an understanding of the evolution of the 

 forms concerned, and this class is the youngest of the three ; 

 here we find consequent, antecedent, and superposed rivers, sub- 

 sequent and obsequent valleys, maturely dissected plateaus, and 

 partly regraded slopes. None of the classes contains as many 

 terms as it needs. 



The first or empirical class has the merit of simplicity and 

 safety, and some geographers would therefore hold closely to it, 

 as if forgetting that such a method of description implies the 

 neglect of those mental faculties which have been so successfully 

 employed in investigations that make " scientific use of the imag- 



