582 The American Naturalist. [July. 
of travel and exploration, reports of state and government surveys, 
and the like, in order to give some freshness and reality to the 
study. It is apparent enough that, in its fully expanded form, it 
will take a long time for the better geographical teaching to enter 
the larger public schools, but in schools where teachers are nu- 
merous enough to give every scholar a good share of personal 
attention, I do not despair of seeinj geographical laboratories 
and a rational inductive method of instruction employed. 
Comparisons have already been made between the methods 
employed in teaching biology some forty or fifty years ago and 
during the last decade. It seems to me that physical geography 
is still in the undeveloped condition that biology has outgrown. 
Our text-books of physical geography attempt to describe the 
whole earth, just as the old natural histories tried to describe the 
whole animal and vegetable kingdoms. Since the publication of 
Huxley and Martin's Biology, this 'plan has been abandoned in 
the better schools, and the pupil now studies the few typical forms 
that give him a knowledge of the great resemblances of animals, 
and does not dwell on their minute differences. He learns a good 
deal about a few animals instead of a very little about a great 
many. I should like to see the same change introduced into the 
teaching of physical geography. It is impossible for a scholar to 
learn anything definite about the form of the earth's surface if he 
attempts to study all the continents. He might as well attempt 
to learn about the distribution of forests instead of studying the 
structure of plants in his botany lessons. Something of the 
grosser continental forms should of course be considered, just as 
it is interesting to know something of the distribution of forested 
and of desert region ; the general distribution of land and water, 
its relation to climate, history, and so on, — all this is of great 
interest ; so are the generalizations concerning evolution and the 
speculations concerning migrations in which the biologist may 
indulge, but they do not form the chief matter of our best ele- 
mentary methods, for they cannot be suflficiently original with the 
ordinary student. When a boy grows up and travels over the 
country, he never sees the grosser continental forms ; they are 
too large. He sees only small forms, corresponding to the indi- 
