178 The American Geologist. March, 1904. 
is considered as an example of a kind of things, so that it shall 
appeal to the reasonable understanding rather than to the em- 
pirical memory. Progress of this sort is already apparent in 
the schools, but it has not yet reached a desirable measure of 
advance. 
One of the best results that will follow from the systematic 
recognition of a large number of well-defined types will be the 
natural development of an adequate geographical terminologv. 
When review. is made of modern geographical articles, it is 
curious and significant to find only a small addition to the 
school-boy list of technical terms. This is not true of any sub- 
ject that is cultivated in the universities as well as in the 
schools. It is a reproach to geography that the results of ma- 
ture observation are so generally described in the inadequate 
terms of immature study ; this reproach will have the less 
ground the more thoroughly systematic geography is studied. 
With the development of more mature methods of description 
there may .come a larger share of attention to the thing de- 
scribed, and thus a relative decrease of attention to matters 
of merely personal narrative. I do not wish to lessen the num- 
ber of entertaining books of travel which now fill many of the 
shelves in libraries called geographical, but it would be a great 
satisfaction to see the standard works of geographical libraries 
given a more objective quality, so that they might compare 
favorably with the standard works of geological or botanical 
libraries, in which the element of personal narrative is reduced 
to its properly subordinate place. 
Another step of equal importance with the establishment 
of geographical types is the change from the empirical to the 
explanatory or rational or genetic method of treating the ele- 
mental facts that enter into geographical relationships. The 
rational method has long been pursued in regard to the facts 
of the atmosphere and the ocean ; it is coming to be adopted 
for facts concerning the lands ; and since the adoption of an 
evolutionary philosophy, the evolutionary explanation of the 
organic items of geography may replace the teleological treat- 
ment that obtained in Ritter's time. It is, however, very sel- 
dom the case that geographers adopt the rational method con- 
sciously and fully ; hence special attention to this phase of the 
theoretical side of geography may be strongly urged. It may 
