Geo

“ Every rock beneath our feet has its story of change to tell us. Mountains, valleys, and plains, continents and islands, have passed through vicissitudes innumerable, and bear within them the evidence of a gradual development or evolution. Looking back through the vista of the past one sees the dry lands gradually separating from the ocean, and gathering together into continental masses according to a definite plan. It is this slow growth, this august evolution, carried on through countless æons, which most impresses the student of physical geology. ”

“ The patient study of the rocks has revealed the origin of the present configuration of the land. There is not a hill or valley, not a plateau or mountain-region, which does not reveal its own history. The geologist can tell you why continents are bordered by coast-ranges, and why their interiors are generally comparatively low and basin-shaped. The oceanic basins and continental areas, we learn, are primeval wrinkles in the earth’s crust, caused by its irregular subsidence upon the gradually cooling and contracting nucleus. ”

“ Here, there, everywhere, some in groups, others in serried ranks, were massed the war-scarred veterans of an innumerable host—the rugged remnants of a vast ancient plateau, stretching north, southeast and west, as far as the eye could see. All this vast array of snow-clad peaks, frowning precipices, glistening glaciers, and yawning gulfs, was burnished with the glowing hues of the setting sun. ”

“ This being admitted, I shall now proceed to show that Physical Geography, although, like Political Geography, it is a separate and distinct subject, yet, just as the study of the latter involves some knowledge of History, so the prosecution of Physical Geography compels us to make a certain acquaintance with Geology. We cannot, in fact, learn much about the atmosphere, about rain and rivers, glaciers and icebergs, earthquakes and volcanoes, and the causes of climate, without at the same time becoming more or less familiar with the groundwork on which geological investigations are based. ”

“ Here, for example, is a section across a region of undulating strata (Fig. 2) . Let the line A B represent the surface of the ground, and C D be any datum line—say, the sea-level. An observer at A, who should walk in the direction of B, would cross successively eight outcrops of coal; and, were he incapable of reading the geological structure of the ground, he might imagine that he had come upon eight separate coal-seams. ”

“ Thus, if Political Geography be closely connected and interwoven, as it were, with History, not less intimate are its relations to Physical Geography. It does not embrace all Physical Geography, but it introduces us to many facts and — 4 — phenomena, the causes and mutual relations of which we cannot understand without first mastering the teachings of Physical Geography. In the study of this latter science we come more closely into contact with Nature ”

“ In short, from what we do know of the geological structure — 363 — of the continents in question, we can hardly doubt that they have passed through geographical revolutions of a like kind with those of Europe and North America. Everywhere over the great continental plateau elevation appears, in the long-run, to have been in excess of depression, so that, in spite of many subsidences, the tendency of the land throughout the world has been to extend its margins, and to become more and more consolidated. ”

“ What the ideal geographer, as cartographer, first of all tries to do is to devise a notation by which he and his fellow-geographers, by the inspection of a map of a given region, may get a simultaneous vision of the terrestrial phenomena which all the explorers and observers of that region have collectively seen. Now it must always be that however minutely observed and explored a region—even the most inhabited—may be, there is always something new to be observed, even in the shape and configuration of the surface, for these are always changing ”

“ In 1757 he came before the public as the inventor of the ‘universal planispheres, or terrestrial and celestial globes in plano,’ four large stereographical maps, with a transparent index placed over each map, ‘whereby the circles of the sphere are instantaneously projected on the plane of the meridian for any latitude, and the problems of geography, astronomy, and navigation wrought with the same certainty and ease as by the globes themselves, without the help of scale and compasses, pen and ink.’ He published an account of their ‘Description and Use,’ 2nd edition, 8vo, London, 1759. ”

“ His studies in geography were always in those fields which form the border-land between geology and geography. The history of the development of scenery and of earth-forms in general, and the relation between geological structure and geographical configuration, were favourite subjects for his pen. In this he was a true follower of Playfair. He delighted [Pg 191] also to prepare short notices for the Society’s magazine, describing the results of recent work on prehistoric man, on changes of climate in recent geological periods, and the action of ice in the production of surface features. ”

“ Much the same may be said of the dikes of cooled magma which have been injected along preëxisting fractures.
The base of the geological map.—Modern topographic maps form an important part of the library of the serious student of physiography; they are the gazetteer of this branch of science. Every civilized nation has to-day either completed a topographic atlas of its territory, or it is vigorously prosecuting a survey to furnish maps which represent the relief with some detail, and publishing the results in the form of an atlas of quadrangles. ”

“ To measure the elevation of the mountain-top above the sea, and to lay down upon our maps the mountain ranges of the earth, is regarded in geography as an important thing, and rightly so. Equally important is it, in bringing the physical geography of the sea regularly within the domains of science, to present its orography, by mapping out the bottom of the ocean so as to show the depressions of the solid parts of the earth’s crust there below the sea-level. ”

“ The sciences of geonomy are divided usually into two correlative groups, called geography, in which five departments are pretty well recognized, namely, ethereal geography, stellar geography, aerial geography, hydrographic geography, and land geography ”

“ There is a general and perfectly intelligible unwillingness to allow that scenery which now appears so complete and connected in all its parts was not the [Pg 56] result of one probably sudden or violent cause. Yet the simplest explanation is not always necessarily the correct one. In reality, the problems presented to us by the existing topography of the land, fascinating though they are, become daily more complex, and demand the whole resources of geological science. They cannot be solved by any rough-and-ready process. ”

“ But modern observations have tended continually to dispel this delusion, and the geologist is now convinced that at no given era of the past have the boundaries of land and sea, or the height of the one and depth of the other, or the geographical range of the species inhabiting them, whether of animals or plants, become fixed and unchangeable. Of the extent to which fluctuations have been going on since the globe had already become the dwelling-place of Man, some idea may be formed from the examples which I shall give in this and the next nine chapters. ”

“ But in physical and structural geology he took a very high place among living scientists. The thorough training and natural aptitude for structural and field geology made him a very shrewd judge of controversial questions in tectonics, and laid a secure foundation for his researches in geographical evolution and the origin of the earth’s surface features. As a geographer, interested especially in the larger problems of geographical configuration, he earned a world-wide reputation. ”

“ The geoid is that surface to which the oceans would conform over the entire Earth if free to adjust to the combined effect of the Earth’s mass attraction and the centrifugal force of the Earth’s rotation. ”

“ On their side, geometers, when measuring the size of the entire earth, avail themselves of the data furnished by the natural philosopher and astronomer; and the geographer on his part makes use of those of the geometer.
3. The heavens and the earth must be supposed to be divided each into five zones, and the celestial zones to possess the same names as those below. The motives for such a division into zones we have already detailed. These zones may be distinguished by circles drawn parallel to the equator, on either side of it. ”

“ He finds, on the other hand, an early predominance of reason in the inhabitants of a country like ancient Greece, where natural features are on a small scale, more comprehensible, nearer the measure of man himself.18 The scientific geographer, grown suspicious of the omnipotence of climate and cautious of predicating immediate psychological effects which are easy to assert but difficult to prove, approaches the problem more indirectly and reaches a different solution. ”

“ A glance at the geological structure of the Alps and the Jura shows us that these mountains are a typical example of such a chain; they are mountains of elevation. In the Jura the mountains form a series of long parallel ridges separated by intervening hollows; and the form or shape of the ground coincides in a striking manner with the foldings of the strata. In these mountains we see a succession of symmetrical flexures, the beds dipping in opposite directions at the same angle from the axis of each individual anticline. ”

“ In like manner, when the geologist surveys the convexity of his own globe, he finds its solid covering composed of rocks and beds of all shapes and kinds, lying at every possible angle, occupying every possible position, and all of them, generally speaking, at the same distance from the earth’s centre. Every where we see what was deep brought into visible relation with what was superficial—what is old with what is new—what preceded life with what followed it. ”

“ In this terrestrial globe, which we here present, you will find all the regions and islands as far as they have been seen, up to the present, and marked by our navigators, or have been seen and marked by the navigators of other nations, placed in their own proper position of longitude and latitude, with the greatest care and industry, which not only will be a source of pleasure to the students of geography but also of the greatest utility to those who visit far distant shores, which are warmed by another sun. ”

“ But to record geographical knowledge, the first thing that is necessary is a map, and accordingly it is a Greek philosopher named Anaximander, of Miletus, of the sixth century B.C., to whom we owe the invention of map-drawing. Now, in order to make a map of one's own country, little astronomical knowledge is required. As we have seen, savages are able to draw such maps ”

“ The hills are shadows, and they flow
From form to form, and nothing stands;
They melt like mists, the solid lands,
Like clouds they shape themselves and go.
[F] This is the generally accepted view of modern geologists. It is very difficult, however, to understand how a wide continental area can be vertically upheaved. It seems more probable that the upheaval of the land is only apparent. The land seems to rise because the sea retreats as the result of the subsidence of the crust within the great oceanic basins. ”

“ We have now been tracing upon a spherical surface the region which we state to be occupied by the habitable earth; and whoever would represent the real earth as near as possible by artificial means, should make a globe like that of Crates, and upon this describe the quadrilateral within which his chart of geography is to be placed. ”

“ The knowledge of a mountain's geognostic character, at which one, in the more southerly countries, can only arrive after long and laborious researches, removal of soil and the like, is here gained almost at the first glance ”

“ In view of the countless springs and tributaries that combine to swell the current of every historical movement, anthropo-geography looks for the origin of a people not in a narrowly defined area, but in a broad, ill-defined center of dispersion, from which many streams simultaneously and successively flow out as from a low-rimmed basin, and which has been filled from many remoter sources. ”

“ It brings the growth of geography well before our minds to look at the map in Gladstone’s Juventus Mundi, representing the world according to the Homeric poems, with its group of nations round the Mediterranean, and the great Ocean River encircling the whole. Later, in the world as known to geographers such as Strabo, the lands of men form a vast oval, reaching from the pillars of Herakles across to far India, and from tropical Africa up to polar Europe. How land and sea came to lie as they do, it is the business of geology to explain. ”

“ And the word Eurasia could not possibly mean Europe and Asia: it is only the jargon of half-educated men.
Logically one may begin geography with Space, the Solar System, our rotating globe, the oceans and the continents, and so on; but children may do better by beginning at the other end with maps of places where they live. I have sent Lustleigh school a map of Lustleigh, 6 ft. wide and 4 ft. high, Ordnance Survey, 25 inches to the mile, or one square inch for each square acre, with the acreage of all the fields and gardens printed on them. ”