172 The American Geologist. March, 1904. 
graphical point of view, so as to emphasize the essential quality 
of geographical study, had there been a conscious wish to this 
end. But in. other cases, the subjects presented belong so clear- 
ly elsewhere, or are treated so completely from some other than 
a geographical point of view, as to fall quite outside of geog- 
raphy ; for example, a recent number of one of our geograph- 
ical journals contained an excellent full page plate and a half 
page of text on the "Skull of the Imperial Mammoth," with 
brief description of its size and anatomy, but with nothing more 
nearly approaching geographical treatment than the statement 
that the specimen came from "the sands of western Texas." 
In all such cases it is open to question whether close scrutiny 
as to inclusion and exclusion has been given, and while the 
policy pursued by many geographical societies of generously 
accepting for their journals many sorts of interesting articles 
has something to commend it in the way of pleasing a mixed 
constituency, it is nevertheless open to the objection of not suf- 
ficiently advancing the more scientific aspects of geography. 
Blades of grass and mammoth skulls are very good. things, if 
crops of hay and collections of fossils are to be gathered ; but 
they are in the way of the growth of the best corn and of the 
publication of the best geographical journals. Let no one sup- 
pose, however, that the audiences in geographical lecture halls 
or the readers of geographical journals need suflfer under the 
scrutiny that is here urged regarding lectures and articles. 
There is, even under the strictest scrutiny, an abundance of 
varied and interesting matter of a strictly geographical nature ; 
few if any sciences are richer than geography in matter of 
general interest. There is indeed some reason for thinking 
that the real obstagle in the way of applying close scrutiny in 
the way here recommended, is the difficulty of obtaining high- 
grade material presented in an essentially geographical form. 
Inasmuch as this difficulty arises from the relative inattention 
to geography as a mature science, it is the business of geo- 
graphical societies to remove the difficulty. 
It has been maintained that one of the embarrassments from 
which geography suffers is the incoherence of the many things 
that are involved in its broad relationships. This is not really 
a serious embarrassment, and so far as it is an embarrassment 
at all it is not peculiar to geography. It is not a sef-ious em- 
