Geography in the United States. — Davis. 167 
parts of the country, even if gathered from persons entitled to 
speak with what is called "authority," would probably differ 
as widely as did the nomenclatures of the leading physio- 
graphic divisions of North America as proposed in a symposi- 
um a few years ago; but if careful consideration and free dis- 
cussion are given to the subject, unity of opinion will in due 
time be approached as closely as is desirable. 
As a contribution toward this collection of opinions, let me 
state my own view : the essential in geography is a relation 
between the elements of terrestrial environment and the items 
of organic response ; this being only a modernized extension of 
Ritter's view. Everything that involves such a relationship is 
to that extent geographic. Anything in which such a relation- 
ship is wanting is to that extent not geographic. The loca- 
tion of a manufacturing village at a point where a stream af- 
fords water-power is an example of the kind of relation that is 
meant, and if this example is accepted, then the reasonable prin- 
ciple of continuity will guide us to include under geography 
ever}- other example in which the way that organic forms have 
of doing things is conditioned by their inorganic environment. 
The organic part of geography must not be limited to man, be- 
cause the time is now past when man is studied altogether 
apart from the other forms of life on the earth. The colonies 
of ants on our western deserts, with their burrows, their hills, 
their roads and their threshing floors, exhibit responses to ele- 
ments of environment found in soil and climate as clearly as a 
manufacturing village exhibits a response to water power. The 
different coloration of the dorsal and ventral parts of fish is a 
response to the external illumination of our non-luminous earth. 
The word arrive is a persistent memorial of the importance 
long ago attached to a successful crossing of the shore line 
that separates the sea and land. It is not significant whether 
the relation and the elements that enter into it are of easy or 
difficult understanding, nor whether they are what we call 
important or unimportant, familiar or unfamiliar. The essen- 
tial quality of geography is that it involves relations of things 
organic and inorganic ; and the entire content of geography 
would include all such relations. A large library would be re- 
quired to hold a full statement of so broad a subject, but ele- 
mentary text-books of geography may be made by selecting 
