lines of traffic by the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul and the Duluth, South Shore & Atlantic railways.-[Mineral Resources of the United States,] B. S. BUTLER. ECUADOR'S CACAO CROP Ecuador's cacao crop continues to increase. The value of the cacao for the period of 1913 was $2,650,602, and of 1914, $4,819,277. If these figures are an indication of the total year's exports of cacao from Guayaquil, they promise to reach 100,000,000 pounds. The export duties collected during the 1914 period aggregated more than $1,200,000. Some idea of the magnitude of the cacao crop may be gained from the fact that the main streets of this city are almost wholly occupied by cacao beans, placed there to undergo the necessary curing process, and the wharves are covered to a height of several feet with the beans in bags ready for export. The enormous yield is the result of the increased acreage and greater number of trees planted in the last few years. This policy is being continued year after year, so that soon the cacao crop of Ecuador will far surpass present figures. So long as the cacao crop continues to be so bounteous, the Republic will occupy an independent financial position. AMERICAN OIL DRILLERS IN CHINA During early June, 1914, 19 expert oil-well drillers, of the Standard Oil Co., left Shanghai for Shensi Province in Northern China to make a practical investigation of oil possibilities. They are to proceed via Hankow, on the Yangtze River, thence to Honanfu on the railroad line between Hankow and Peking. From that point 40 days will be occupied in reaching the oil fields. On the initial trip the party conveys 250 to 300 tons of American oildrilling machinery, including cable tools for drilling. There are four outfits of this kind, besides two additional outfits of rotary machinery for soft formation work. This caravan is utilizing 300 Chinese carts and, as 40 days are required to reach the oil fields from the railway at Honanfu and an equal number of days in returning, 80 days will be occupied in taking each separate oildrilling outfit into the interior. It is anticipated, however, that only a short time will be required by the American experts to demonstrate the oil prospects in Northern China. The machinery sent in is capable of drilling a well 3,000 to 4,000 feet deep. At present some oil wells in the Shensi Province have been drilled 350 feet by Japanese. The American drilling follows an investigation by American geologists. All the provisions and supplies for this extensive preliminary work are from the United States. The machinery was landed at Taku, near Tientsin, and from there transported by rail to Honanfu. The commercial interests of China, generally, are deeply interested in the outcome of the Standard Oil investigations. The importation of kerosene into China for 1913 totaled 183,984,052 gallons, valued at $18,823,508 gold. TREE PLANTING IN THE PHILIPPINES A tree planting scheme for the Philippine Islands has recently been inaugurated by the consular Bureau of Forestry cooperating with the Bureau of Education. For several years the Forest School at Los Banos has been experimenting with tree planting. Out of several hundred tree species experimented with, six species have been found to thrive under adverse conditions, and to produce wood of value in the market. The species chosen, Teak, Molave, Narra, Lumbang, Lamutan, and Tuai, produce the strongest of woods for construction, and some of the most beautiful as cabinet woods. The Bureau of Education has hundreds of school gardens and farms, and will plant the seeds and seedlings supplied by the Bureau of Forestry, and the nurserymen and rangers of the Forestry Bureau will actively cooperate with the schools in the venture. The Bureau of Public Works will also cooperate, planting seeds and seedlings along the highways. There are at present over 4000 miles of first class, rock-surfaced highways in the Islands and new roads are added at a rate of over a mile a day. This whole movement is one of the largest significance, and well illustrates the wise foresight, and careful planning characteristic of Major Ahearn, chief forester, and Mr. Frank R. Crone, chief of the Bureau of Education. J. PAUL GOODE. COMMERCIAL YEAR OF EGYPT As the result of the lowest Nile recorded for a century, some 400,000 acres of productive land remained unwatered. Had it not been for the augmented storage capacity provided through the heightening of the Aswan Dam in 1912, an almost total crop failure would undoubtedly have resulted. The rice crop was most affected and was almost a total failure. The cultivation of other food grains was greatly restricted so that as much as possible of the land supplied with water might be put under cotton. Grain foodstuffs and feed can be replaced by imported products. The depredations of the pink boll worm, Egypt's new cotton parasite, were more marked than during the 1912-13 season. The worm, which houses in the seed, destroys the seed's value, and it is this that causes the damage rather than the effect on the staple, provided, of course, that the worm does not attack the plant too early. Its presence in the seed makes necessary the most scrupulous care in selecting seed for the next season's planting.-[Daily Consular and Trade Reports.] NEWS NOTES. Professor William Morris Davis returned to the United States early in November, after spending nine months in the study of coral reefs in the South Seas and visiting Australia and New Zealand with the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Professor Albert Perry Brigham has returned to his work at Colgate University after spending a year in Europe. In August last, he gave a course of seven lectures before the Oxford University School of Geography upon the subject: Regional Development and Conservation Problems in the United States. Professor J. Paul Goode of the University of Chicago and Professor Frank McMurry of Teachers College, Columbia University, addressed the sixty-second annual meeting of the Wisconsin Teachers Association in Milwaukee on November 5th and 6th, their respective subjects being "Japan," and "Teaching Pupils How to Study." Mr. David T. Day has resigned from the United States Geological Survey to enter private practice. He has served the federal bureau for many years. A recent publication of the Geological Survey by Dr. Day is a colored wall map of the United States, 49 by 76 inches, sold for one dollar, and showing the oil and gas fields of the United States, and the principal prpe lines by which oil is transported from Kansas, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania to the Atlantic coast at New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, and from Oklahoma and Texas to Sabine Pass and Port Arthur on the Gulf of Mexico northeast of Galveston. Professor Eugen Oberhummer of the University of Vienna has been appointed visiting Austrian professor to Columbia University, where he will lecture during the second semester of the present year. Dr. Oberhummer lectured in the geography departments at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, Chicago, Wisconsin, and other American universities in 1910. The Association of American Geographers will hold its eleventh annual meeting at Chicago from December 29th to 31st, 1914, under the presidency of Professor A. P. Brigham. NOTICE REGARDING THE NEXT NUMBER The Journal of Geography for January, 1915, will contain a Supple mentary List of Material on Geography which may be obtained Free or at Small Cost. The list covers 22 printed pages and includes 465 titles. It has been prepared by Miss Mary Josephine Booth, librarian of the Eastern Illinois State Normal School at Charleston, Illinois. Teachers and superintendents desiring extra copies of this number may obtain them at a cost of 15 cents each, or 10 cents each in lots of five or more, by writing to the Business Manager, Journal of Geography, Madison, Wis., before December 10th, and indicating the number of copies they desire. The similar list published in this magazine for January, 1914, is entirely out of print. Volume XIII JANUARY 1915 Number 5 ESSENTIALS OF MODERN GEOGRAPHY AND CRITERIA FOR THEIR DETERMINATION.* By George J. Miller State Normal School, Mankato, Minn. MODERN GEOGRAPHY URING the past ten years geography has been undergoing a rapid evolution. In the early days it was definitely a study of places-naming, locating, bounding, et cetera. This resulted in a rather dry and uninteresting subject and in justifiable condemnation. Then came a period of disorganization when certainty ceased to exist. This has been followed by definite reconstruction until today there is practically a universal agreement of what constitutes scientific geography. The European concept, which has found some followers in this country, emphasizes the distribution idea. The American concept retains this idea but adds something far more vital, viz., the idea of life relationship. Hence modern scientific geography may be considered to be a study of the response of life to the natural environment. This retains everything desirable in the older concepts of the subject, but places emphasis upon the cause and effect idea. It makes possible a sharp cleavage between the science of geography and all the other subjects. The fact that geography calls upon other subjects for material does not mean that it consists of scraps of knowledge that are treated more fully in their respective departments. This is no more true of geography than many other sciences. Practically all of them must use geographic material in their discussions, yet the geographer does not claim them as a part of his field of work. It follows, therefore, that the essentials of the subject and criteria for their determination are found in conformity with this concept. Since geography has become a definite science, with sharp lines of demarcation between it and other sciences, it is our duty to make our work truly geography and not something else. ESSENTIAL PHASES OF THE SUBJECT If we consider the subject as a whole the question naturally arisesWhat are its essential phases? Reduced to their lowest terms they are Physical Environment and Life Responses. Elementary school geography is of necessity confined to a study of the simplest principles of the subject and their application to regions. Under physical environment the simplest divisions are air, land, water, and planetary relations. These terms are to be interpreted * Read in opening a geography round table conference of the Minnesota Educational Association, St. Paul, Oct. 23, 1914. in their broadest sense and only the elementary phase of each is to be considered in the elementary school. Plant, animal, and human life constitute the responses. These are also to be considered in the simpler and broader Human activities are practically the field of study for children. Very slight attention need be given to physiological modifications that may have been brought about by the natural environment. The latter should be used only when such a response is so clear and simple that it can be understood readily. The field of human activities that are direct responses to the environment is so large that there is little need of going into any other branch. of the subject, especially when those responses are open to question. DIVISIONS OF THE SUBJECT AND THEIR RELATION TO ELEMENTARY SCHOOL GEOGRAPHY In selecting material for elementary school work we should have clearly in mind a logical organization of the entire science. This is not only necessary in selecting subject-matter but in the construction of a course of study. The commonly accepted divisions of the entire field of geography are: 1. Physical geography. 2. Phyto-geography. 3. Zoogeography. 4. Anthropo- or human geography. Economic, commercial, historical, and political. No sound geographic study can be carried on without a clear understanding of physical geography. It constitutes the natural environment of all life and is, therefore, fundamental. This does not mean, however, that the abstract subject should be taught in the elementary school. I am convinced that it can be taught in such a way that the life relationships will be constantly realized and understood by the youngest child in our geography course. Among younger children the physical environment will be learned from a study of life, and in the later years the life response may be reasoned from a study of the environment. This is not theoretical only because it is being done today in the better schools. Phytogeography, zoogeography, economic, commercial, historical, or political geography, as such, have no more place in the elementary school than does physical geography. This means, therefore, that in an elementary course of study all these fields of geography must be blended and the whole field drawn upon to give a clear concept of the influence of physical environment upon life-plant, animal, and human. PRESENT TEACHING VS. MODERN CONCEPTION OF THE SCIENCE Does our geography teaching today conform to this definite, and thoroughly scientific concept of the subject? If not, why not? and what can be done to bring that about? Probably the first great reason for non-conformity |