Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/899

Rh level, a new cycle is often introduced, by massive uplifts or depressions of the region concerned. All these principles are illustrated in infinite detail on our Atlantic seaboard from New England to Georgia, and the new method is fast becoming a master key for unlocking both the geological history and present meaning of all continental areas. McGee goes so far as to say that "nearly as much information concerning the geologic history of the Atlantic slope has been obtained from the topographic configuration of the region within two years (1887 and 1888) as was gathered from the sediments of the coastal plain and their contained fossils in two generations." Davis urges the co-operation of State surveys in such advanced and rational geographic work, and with a view to reports which shall be of immediate service to the public and to the schools. A large element in this geographic advance has been the emphasis laid upon geographic work by Major Powell as Director of the United States Geological Survey, a policy with which Mr. Walcott, the present director, appears to be in fullest accord. A good map reveals more land history to a trained geographer of the modern school than most others can find out in the actual field. The geologists, teachers of geography, and indeed all citizens of New York are losers by the failure of our legislators to provide more liberally and promptly for the study of our geography by new methods. A great commonwealth, which Prof. Hall and his associates made classic geologic ground for all time, finds the knowledge of its geography in a backward state as compared with its neighbors, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

What place is the new geography to have in our system of education? This just now is the question of importance and the center of much discussion. Geography in the lower schools has served to impart a group of facts about the world, which respectability and convenience require a youth to have. Cultural value has not been enough considered, and from the higher schools the subject has more often been absent. With the tendency of the times, geography has of late been taught to the child more from out-of-door and local facts, and so has come nearer the new geography in its spirit. But the teaching yet lacks breadth and strength, because the principles of the subject have not yet become available to teachers, except in favored centers. That geography of the new type lends itself to the training of the reason there can be no question. The causes of geographic forms arouse inquiry in nearly all persons. Minds of all grades become alert when the origin of soils, rocks, fossils, valleys, terraces, lakes, swamps, hills, waterfalls, mountains, and continents is explained in common language. A discreet teacher, at home in the subject, has no difficulty in bringing the main doctrines of geographic