Page:The Journal of geology (IA journalofgeology21894univers).pdf/84
Introductory illustration of facts.—It is well at the outset to present a collection of varied geographical illustrations, in order to bring prominently before the mind the great variety of the facts with which we have to deal. At the same time, a preliminary exercise is gained in the interpretation of different means of geographical representation. The following list will serve to indicate the class of materials from which selection may be made for a first week's laboratory work:
Heim's model of an Alpine torrent; Harden's model of Morrison's Cove, Penn., or a photograph of this model, or of Branner's model of Arkansas; Jackson's photograph of the deep valley of the Blackwater in the plateau of West Virginia; Hölzel's oleograph of the Hungarian plain; Becker's elaborately colored and shaded relief map of the Canton Glarus, Switzerland; a group of contoured map sheets, as the twelve that embrace the Berkshire plateau and the Connecticut valley in western Massachusetts, mounted as a wall map for better convenience in study; a hachured map, such as that of the Scotch Highlands, in a group of sheets of the British Ordnance Survey, also mounted as a wall map; a tinted relief map, as of New Jersey, from the topographical atlas of that state, etc., etc.
The need of the systematic study of geography is apparent from the difficulty that most students have in expressing the facts portrayed in these various illustrations. Words are not easily summoned to describe them. Many of the illustrations are on a much larger scale than is commonly employed in atlases, and the ordinary accounts of direction and distance usually employed in describing similar maps, are at once felt to be insufficient to express the varied reliefs here exhibited. How can the student best approach a perception and an understanding of the facts before him and at the same time gain an ability to describe them in fitting language?
Insufficience of inductive study.—The ordinary fund of geographical terms does not suffice to describe good maps and models with sufficient exactness. Further than this, a few questions from the instructor will show that many facts plainly set forth