Geography in the United Slates. — Davis. 183 
be as unreasonable to omit all reference to glacial erosion in a 
geographical description of Norway as to omit all reference 
to subaerial erosion in a geographical account of our Atlantic 
coastal plain. 
Nowhere is the cultivation of systematic geography more 
helpful than in the study of local or regional geography. The 
truth of this may be appreciated by considering the case of 
botany. No botanist would atempt to describe the flora of one 
of our states until he had obtained a good knowledge of sys- 
tematic botany in general. Such knowledge would help him at 
every turn in his study of a local flora, not only in describing 
the plants that he might find, and in arranging the descriptions 
in a serviceable order, but also in finding the plants themselves. 
I believe that a closely equivalent statement might be made 
with regard to the geography of a state ; and yet there is not, 
to my knowledge, a single work on regional geography in 
which a recognized scheme of systematic geography has been 
avowedly followed as a guide for the treatment of local fea- 
tures. The adoption of such a guide would lead to various ad- 
vantages ; on announcing that a certain scheme of systematic 
geography has been chosen as a standard, the writer of a re- 
gional work thereby gives notice in the simplest manner to the 
reader as to the kind and amount of knowledge necessary to 
understand the work in hand ; descriptions are made at once 
briefer and more intelligible by phrasing them in terms of a 
scheme that is elsewhere stated in full ; relative completeness 
of treatment is assured, for with a systematic list of all kinds 
of geographical relations at hand, the writer is not likely to 
overlook any element of the subject that occurs within his 
chosen region ; the reader can easily find any desired topic, not 
only by means of the table of contents and index, but also by 
means of the standard scheme of classification in accordance 
with which all elements are arranged ; and finally, books on dif- 
ferent regions will come to exhibit a desirable uniformity of 
treatment, when they are based on a common scheme of sys- 
tematic geography. Although no books of this kind now exist, 
I do not think it overventuresome to say that some such books 
will soon exist, and that they will form very serviceable con- 
tributions to the literature of our subject. 
