i66 The American Geologist. March. 1904. 
Let me urge in the first place that close scrutiny should be 
given to things that are popularly called geographical, with 
the object of determining the essential content of geographical 
science and of excluding from our responsibilit}^ everything 
that is not essentially geographic. Only in this way can we 
clear the ground for the cultivation of really geographical prob- 
lems in geographical education and in geographical societies. 
This scrutiny should be exercised all along the line : in the 
preparation of text-books, in the training of teachers, in the 
study of experts, and in the conduct of any geographical so- 
ciety that attempts to take a really scientific position. The es- 
sential content of geographical science is so large that the 
successful cultivation of the whole of it demands all the ener- 
gies of many experts. Those who are earnestly engaged in 
cultivating geography proper should treat non-geographic 
problems in the same way that a careful farmer would treat 
blades of grass in his cornfield : he would treat them as weeds 
and cut them out, for, however useful grass is in its own place, 
its growth in the cornfield will weaken the growth of the corn. 
So in the field of geographical study, there is no room for both 
geography and history ; geography and geology ; geography 
and astronomy. Geography will never gain the disciplinary 
quality that is so profitable in other subjects until it is as 
jealously guarded from the intrusion of irrevelant items as is 
physics or geometry or Latin. Indeed the analogy of the blades 
of grass in the cornfield is hardly strong enough. It is well 
known that Ritter, the originator of the causal notion in geog- 
raphy, and therefore the greatest benefactor of geography in 
the nineteenth century, was so hospitable in his treatment of 
history that his pupils grew up in large number to be histor- 
ians and his own subject was in a way lost sight of by many 
of his students who became professors of geography, so-called, 
in the German universities, until Peschel revolted and turned 
attention again to the essential features of geography proper. 
Close scrutiny of what is commonly called geography will 
certainly be beneficial in bringing forward the essence of the 
subject and in relegating irrevelant topics to the background; 
but it is not to be expected that any precise agreement will 
soon be reached as to what constitutes geography, strictly in- 
terpreted. Opinions on the subject, gathered from different 
