Page:The Journal of geology (IA journalofgeology21894univers).pdf/113

style of those geological synopses by which many of our state reports are opened. The accounts of a certain group of geographical features should always involve the comparison of local examples with those from other regions, much as the paleontologist or the petrographer makes his comparisons of home and foreign examples of fossils or rocks. The chapters must be written in simple style, for many teachers must use them as reference books. They must be well illustrated, for most teachers will have no other pictures of their home district, however well they may be supplied with views of foreign countries. They must, above all, be prepared in accordance with a well considered geographical system. The chapters should not be so long as to fatigue or repel, but rather so short as to awaken an appetite for more reading of the same kind. They should be published not only in the usual annual reports, but also as separate pamphlets for distribution to all schools through the state superintendent of public instruction. Studies of this kind promise to offer most attractive subjects for geographical investigation for many years to come.

There is another and quite different direction in which good work should be done by the trained geographer. That is in the preparation of maps and illustrations for school books. It is manifest enough in examining the maps now in use that they have been drawn by draftsmen, not by geographers. Their lines show no sufficient knowledge of the facts that should be represented. They are simply copies of other maps, with no sufficient expression of meaning. The relief of the land is generally so poorly represented on school maps that no criticism of its execution will make it right; it must be done over again. The outlines of coasts and the courses of rivers are often merely caricatures of the facts. The meaningless irregular curves of Cape Cod and of the Carolina coast offer amusing illustrations of this in many a school geography. The student of geography, who prepares for his work by a good foundation in geology, who carries his geographical studies to the point of original investigation in different parts of the country, and who has a happy