Excerpt from Practical Physiography

The last few years have withnessed important changes in the text-books pertaining to Physical Geography. The study of the world as a fixed model has given place to the study of a world whose physical features are undergoing continual change. This change is in turn seen to affect the climate and the life conditions of plants and animals, and to have an important influence upov the activities of men.

The number of books treating the subject from this newer point of view has rapidly increased, and several of them are so excellent that there would appear to be scarcely room for another book covering the same ground in the same manner. It seems to the author, however, that the evolution of better methods of teaching Physical Geography is still going on. The student will never gain what he should from the study until the use of the text-book is supplemented, not by the indoor laboratory method, for that would take the life out of the subject, but by the study of nature itself in the great outdoor laboratory. It is not the amount of ground gone over, it is not what is memorized from a textbook, it is not watching experiments in the class room, which makes Physical Geography, or Physiography as we prefer to call it, of value in the high school. It is rather the gaining of an ability to understand the meaning of the phenomena of the land, the water, and the air, and the relation of all life to them. For this purpose nothing can take the place of excursions and the study of the real world.

The author has tried to work out in the present volume a practical concrete treatment of the subject along these lines. The book is intended as an aid to study, not as a compendium of information. Consequently a description of the world as a whole is omitted.

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