Geography in the United States. — Davis. 173 
barrassment, because when any element of geography is treat- 
ed in view of the relations into wjiich it enters, it becomes 
reasonably interesting to all who arc concerned with scientific 
geography. The embarrassment is not peculiar to geography, 
for it is found iti all other studies ; in history,' for example, 
where an essay by a specialist on the modern history of South 
America is not likely to excite an enthusiastic interest in the 
mind of the student of classic times in Greece, or in the mind 
of the student of mediaeval church history in Germany ; the 
embarrassment is known also in geology, where the student of 
the petrography of the southern Appalachians, or of the pale- 
ontology of the Trias in California, may care little for a paper 
by a colleague on the glaciation of the Tian Shan mountains 
in Turkestan. Yet, however unlike these various topics in his- 
tory or in geology may be, they are welcomed, if well treated, 
by all the members of the expert society or by all the readers 
of the special journal in which they are presented, because 
they so manifestly make for progress in the science to which 
they belong. Geographers need not therefore be embarrassed 
on finding discussions of magnetic declination as affecting the 
navigation of the Antarctic regions, of the relations of climate 
and religion among the Hopi Amerinds, and of the facilities 
for irrigation peculiar to aggrading fluviatile plains, all in one 
journal ; this diversity of topics only illustrates the great rich- 
ness of geography, and thus likens it to history and geolog}'. 
Let me consider next the advantages that will come to 
geography from the systematic collection and classification of 
all the facts pertinent to it. The popular idea of geographical 
research" is fulfilled when an explorer discovers a new moun- 
tain or a new island ; but discovery is not enough. The thing 
discovered must be carefully described in view of all that is 
known of similar things, and the relation into which the thing 
enters must be sought and analyzed. Careful work of this na- 
ture involves the development of systematic geography, in 
which all item.s of a kind are brought together, and all kinds 
of items are arranged according to some serviceable scheme of 
classification. Geographers are far behind zoologists and bot- 
anists in this respect, for there is today no comprehensive 
scheme of geographical classification in general use. Existing 
schemes are too generally empirical and incomplete. So im- 
