101 Gregory — Progress in Interpretation of Land Forms. 



Aet. III. — A Century of Geology. — Steps of Progress in 

 the Interpretation of Land Forms; by Heebeet E. 

 Geegoey. 



The essence of physiography is the belief that land 

 forms represent merely a stage in the orderly develop- 

 ment of the earth's surface features; that the various 

 dynamic agents perform their characteristic work 

 throughout all geologic time. The formulation of prin- 

 ciple and processes of earth sculpture was, therefore, 

 impossible on the hypothesis of a ready-made earth 

 whose features were substantially unchangeable, except 

 when modified by catastrophic processes. In 1821, J. W. 

 Wilson wrote in this Journal: "Is it not the best theory 

 of the earth, that the Creator, in the beginning, at least 

 at the general deluge, formed it with all its present grand 

 characteristic features?" 1 If so, a search for causes is 

 futile, and the study of the work performed by streams 

 and glaciers and wind is unprofitable. The belief in the 

 Deluge as the one great geological event in the history of 

 the earth has brought it about that the speculations of 

 Aristotle, Herodotus, Strabo, and Ovid, and the illus- 

 trious Arab, Avicenna (980-1037), unchecked by appeal 

 to facts but also unopposed by priesthood or popular 

 prejudice, are nearer to the truth than the intolerant con- 

 troversial writings of the intellectual leaders whose 

 touchstone was orthodoxy. A few thinkers of the 16th 

 century revolted against the interminable repetition of 

 error, and Peter Severinus (1571) advised his students: 

 "Burn up your books . . . buy yourselves stout shoes, 

 get away to the mountains, search the valleys, the 

 deserts, the shores of the seas. ... In this way and no 

 other will you arrive at a knowledge of things." But 

 the thorough-going" " diluvialist ' ' who believed that a 

 million species of animals could occupy a 450-foot 

 Ark, but not that pebbles weathered from rock or that 

 rivers erode, had no use for his powers of observation. 



Sporadic germs of a science of land forms scattered 

 through the literature of the 17th and 18th centuries 

 found an unfavorable environment and produced incon- 

 spicuous growths. Even their sponsors did little to 



1 Numbers refer to titles listed in the Bibliography at the end of this 

 article. 



