Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 57.djvu/179

Rh his followers, especially Gilbert, Dutton and McGee, have consistently carried the consequences of subaërial erosion to their legitimate end in a featureless lowland, and have recognized the controlling influence of the baselevel during all the sequence of changes from the initial to the ultimate form. It is not here essential whether such a featureless lowland exists or ever has existed, but it is absolutely essential to follow the lead of deduction until all the consequences of the theory of erosion are found; and then to accept as true those theoretical deductions which successfully confront the appropriate facts of observation. Only in this way can the error of regarding geography as a purely observational natural science be corrected. Following the acceptance of the doctrine of baselevels came the method of reconstituting the original form initiated by deformation, as a means of more fully understanding the existing form; for only by beginning at the initial form can the systematic sequence of the changes wrought by destructive processes be fully traced and the existing form appreciated. This had often been done before in individual cases, but it now became a habit, an essential step in geomorphological study. Naturally enough, the terms of organic growth, such as young, mature, old, revived, and so on, came to be applied to stages in the development of inorganic forms; and thus gradually the idea of the systematic physiographic development of land forms has taken shape. This idea is to-day the most serviceable and compact summation of all the work of the century on the physical geography of the lands. It recognizes the results of deformation in providing the broader initial forms on which details are to be carved. It gives special attention to the work of destructive processes on these forms, and especially to the orderly sequence of various stages of development, recognizing that certain features are associated with youth, and others with maturity and old age. It gives due consideration to the renewed movements of deformation that may occur at any stage in the cycle of change, whereby a new sequence of change is introduced. It gives appropriate place, not only to the forms produced by the ordinary erosive action of rain and rivers, but to the forms produced by ice and by wind action as well; and it co-ordinates the changes that are produced by the sea on the margin of the land with the changes that are produced by other agencies upon its surface. It considers not only the various forms assumed by the water of the land, such as torrents, rapids, falls and lakes, appropriately arranged in a river system as to time and place, but also the forms assumed by the waste of the land, which, like the water, is on its way to the sea. In a word, it lengthens our own life, so that we may, in imagination, picture the life of a geographical area as clearly as we now witness the life of a quick-growing plant, and thus as readily conceive and as little confuse the orderly development of the many parts of a land form, its divides,