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PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY.
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gorge of the Rhine; the other includes the meandering gorge of the Moselle, with a perfect showing of its abandoned cut-offs among the hills. The flood plain of the Rhine about Mannheim exhibits the former meanders and the present controlled course of the river, foreshadowing the future control of the Mississippi; the morainic country of Prussia is a medley of hills and hollows; the Vistula turns sharply at its Bromberg elbow from the valley that it once followed, but which it now abandons to the little Netze; long curving sand bars form the two enclosed bays of eastern Prussia (the Frische and Kurische Haffe). From Norway (1:100,000), the district of the Christiania fiord is already received in ten sheets of most delicate execution; the greater fiords of the western coast will be ordered as soon as fully published. From Russia (1:400,000), the lakes of Finland, and of the lower Danube. From Austria, a portion of the flood plain of the Danube, and a strip of the fiorded coast of the northern Adriatic. This is only a beginning of what I hope the collection may be in a few years.

I cannot speak too highly of the educative quality of these grouped sheets. It is, in the first place, a good thing for students to inspect, as closely as they may in laboratory work of this kind, the very best products of geographical art. Their ideals are thus raised above the commonplace level. Whatever they afterwards see will be compared with a high standard. A feeling of dissatisfaction will arise regarding the very inferior maps of their home states, to which they have been inured, and from this a demand will grow for the continuation and improvement of the mapping of our country that is now going on. In the second place, the facts of the subject are placed before the student so closely that he cannot fail to be impressed at once with their real features; and these he will find so numerous and so varied that he will perceive the need of serious study for their apprehension. No verbal descriptions from the teacher suffice to replace the portrayal of geographical relief on good maps.

Classification of constructional forms.—It is only after the deductive scheme is well advanced, and after many examples of

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