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considerations should prevail with the entire problem of landforms. Pictures and models must, of course, take the place of actuality in the study of essential types not found in the neighborhood, but the scientific classification should be simple and suitable to the age of the pupil and not be the classification of the university-trained investigator.

In the study of such elements of the other sciences as are found in physical geography an illustration may be offered. Oxygen may be made while studying the atmosphere and experiments tried to test its properties, but chemical explanations should be the simplest, and should be confined as closely as possible to the geographic problems involved. Similarly the pressure of the atmosphere is naturally to be studied with the help of a mercurial barometer set up before the class, with other simple experiments. In both instances, however, the primary object is geography and the secondary object is to make such slight excursions into the fields of chemistry, physics, and other sciences as shall enable the student to find himself, and to appreciate the relations of the other natural sciences to geography.

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THE GEOGRAPHER'S NEED OF TRAVEL

NO be equipped fully to study his subject the geographer must needs travel here and there to see different types of regions and get a firsthand acquaintance with them; to examine on a map and through the medium of other people's observations must be looked upon as a makeshift in place of an ideal, and one that can lead to satisfactory results only with exceptional minds. No doubt much of the geographer's knowledge must be acquired in this way, but nevertheless he must deplore the restrictions in his wanderings. Before he can hope to acquire any moderate degree of competence in research or exposition, he must see and examine at least certain types of land forms, experience certain types of climate, and live among certain formations of vegetation and their correlated types of human activity. The relation of man to his organic and inorganic setting can never be appreciated fully without some firsthand experience of varying conditions of environment. Otherwise the obvious facts will probably be lost sight of. Actual knowledge of and contact with the living world is essential for an understanding of the complexities of human interpendence with nature, and it alone can safeguard the geographer from the dangerous pitfalls of intellectual abstraction."

"And that this travel should be beyond the centres of our complex civilization is also important because geographical facts should first be looked for where they are most obvious, which is in primitive communities still in intimate relationship to their immediate environment."-R. N. R. Brown.

AN AESTHETIC SIDE OF GEOGRAPHY-BEAUTY IN LAND

TH

SCAPE FORMS

By Richard E. Dodge

Teachers College, New York City

HE grand scenic features of our land, and of others known to travelers, have been described fully and seemingly adequately in prose and verse and often in language that is classic. A few writers, whose ways have led them among scenes of great beauty, neither awe-inspiring nor grand, have made known to us the possibilities of joy and inspiration to be gained from looking peacefully and sympathetically upon the little rivers and the small hills that make up their favorite landscape. We have at our service splendid accounts, written in appealing and effective form, of the Sierras, the Yellowstone Canyon, the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, and of Niagara-accounts which lead us to marvel at the grand scale on which nature has worked, and at the wonderful play of colors to be seen in rocks and water under varying intensities of sunlight.

Yet in most landscapes, size and color are only two phases of a many phased beauty, and in many cases the size even fades into insignificance; for when we look closely, the controlling element is that of form. In our mountains, majestic in size, symbols of permanency, stability and strength, seemingly unchanged by the passage of the ages, the impressive and inspiring feature to him who looks with understanding, is the beauty of outline. Each peak and ravine has a form, individual and appealing, over which the shadows play like the smiles and frowns in a human face.

When the profiles are rugged and the lines steeply inclined, the very uprightness of the slopes suggests a strength and power behind the form that give beauty and quality to the mountain mass, even though no single line is artistically pleasing, if studied alone. When, as in certain portions of the Rocky Mountains or the Southern Appalachians, the slopes are gentle, the forms broad and rolling, there is a quietness and repose that is beautiful in the extreme. Such slopes catch and hold the eye by their symmetry and strength and, beautiful in themselves as individual lines, are still more beautiful when, back of the individual lines, is seen the massive nature-sculpture of which every line is a necessary part.

The White Mountains, in New Hampshire, are impressive for their calm majesty, their rolling profiles and their solidity as an unit group. Here the forest cover, the play of shadows as the clouds roll about the summits or the storms rage even into the low-lying valleys, present color effects that appeal to the man who is impressed most vividly by color changes. But back of the superficial changing hues are the "everlasting hills," whose profiles are as they have been through the memory of man, beautiful, dignified and awe inspiring. He who looks out on such a landscape may be charmed and thrilled by the fleeting visions of color that baffle description or reproduction, but the vision

was for a moment and can never be experienced again. It is remembered for the pleasure it gave, but it can not again be seen as a mind picture, clear in detail and strong in outline, as was the momentary vision of beauty. No! the permanent impressions and memories brought home from a mountain-any mountain—are the outlines which never change from visit to visit, which can be engraved on the memory and recalled by the will at any time. It is the beauty of profiles and form that is the permanent pleasure brought away from an intimate life in such a region.

What is true of these mountains is equally true of any mountain area. The scraggy front of the flat topped Catskills or the Cumberlands, with their low-lying peaks of regular and yet varied form, present profiles of equally great beauty, though every line is different from the profiles seen in more varied landscapes. Mountain profiles, in fact any landscape forms, have an added charm and are more rich and suggestive to him who realizes that these profiles tell a story and reflect the life history of the landscape, just as the lines of care, worry, joy, peace and human sympathy in a beloved face reflect the life history of a friend. To look at a land form, not, as a chance thing of the present human epoch but as a result of long ages of existence from the human standpoint, is to put yourself in sympathy with it, to feel in touch with the earth and to get a new comprehension of time and of the immutable earth processes which are carving lines of character and of strength or weakness in the great features of the earth.

Landscape forms impress themselves upon our minds more than we realize until change takes us into a new country where every line is unfamiliar and every outline strange. Homesickness is largely longing for the beloved landscape, whether it be the gently rolling slopes of the prairies, the absolute uniformity of some of the great plains of our country, the mighty towering peaks of the mountains, the flat profiles of the plateaus or the long flowing curves of the sandy beach.

The great charm of any landscape, which is looked at impartially and with no thought of the human associations of plenty and pleasure, want or harshness of life, is as much a beauty of form as of color. We can not divorce the two phases of landscape beauty, but surely one needs as much emphasis and attention as the other. Some surface features present as beautiful profiles and masses as any of the great statues of the masters of sculpture. Whoever has viewed the convex outlines of a perfect sand dune, fluted into thousands of minute ridges by the wind, carries away a memory of a mass of curves as beautiful as any that can be drawn or moulded. Yet these forms have been produced by chance blowings of the wind over millions of particles of sand, formed by one of the great forces of nature working quietly, everlastingly, and with varied emphasis through the years. The dune of today will change by the morrow and is as fleeting in outline as the form of a cloud we watch in the summer sky. Whatever its form, it is always beautiful, if the winds have had

free sway and abundance of material to work upon. To become really acquainted with a series of sand dunes, to know their forms, to read their history, to become steeped with their beauty, is to put oneself in sympathy with nature and to feel a reverence for her works that one can not feel as he faces many of the great works of mankind.

Wherever we go we can see landscape features, great and small, presenting outlines and forms that appeal to the attuned eye because of themselves and not primarily because of the colors which they present. This is especially true over a large part of the northeastern United States where the surface features are dignified, rather than majestic, but where variety of form gives an individuality and a beauty that baffles description. Even our favorite hymn, America, reflects in its stanzas the beauties of the New England landscapes, with "its rocks and rills, its woods and templed hills," and Whittier in several of his poems has pictured for us the quiet scenes, the attractive outlines, and the appealing visions of eastern New England. Here in our very midst are beauties beneath our feet that are little appreciated because so familiar. The smooth, rolling hills of the vicinity of Boston, with their convex curves in every profile and their perfect lenticular form, are among the most attractive features which can be found in any region. Majesty they lack, but yet there is a quiet dignity of outline that suggests slumbering strength and an inscrutable history that challenges the human mind. These hills are usually free from tree growth and, where not disfigured by the pigmy habitations of man, stand out in profile against the sky in low, broad curves that can never be forgotten and will always be loved by him who knows them as a friend.

In the eastern part of our country the color effects of tilled fields or forests often overshadow the beauty of form unless we look carefully; but where, as in the semi-arid regions of the west, the vegetation cover is less dense or even lacking, the beauties of form stand out with great clearness. He who has ridden across the Great Plains of Nebraska, Colorado, or Kansas has been impressed in one of two ways. If the traveler is unhappy when he is out of touch with mankind, he looks upon the Plains as a great, horrid, barren area, unfriendly to man and disagreeable in every feature, and yet which must be endured in as quiet agony as possible. If, however, he has an eye for form and color, these same plains will be a source of constant pleasure, not only during the journey but so long as memory brings their outlines clearly to mind. The gently rolling hills that stretch off in low billows to the horizon, like a great earth ground swell, suggest the infinite as do few features in the world. To look out on these great waves of form, succeeding one another in unending procession, and yet without monotony, to the edge of things, is to get an impression of large scale beauty, of the vastness of the world and of the infinitely small part that a human individual plays therein, that is almost overwhelmingly in its sweep. Here the beauty of form is supreme and only the mentally blind can fail to be impressed by that beauty. Detail is lost in the

vastness and dignity of the whole and the mind is opened to conceptions of time and space, as in a mountain region, but perhaps more easily because of the great unity of the whole which is the most striking feature of such a landscape.

Even in those regions that are absolutely flat, where the vision is limited only by the curved horizon, where it would seem as if there could be no beauty because of the absolute uniformity of features, there is a beauty that is most impressive to one who looks on such a place as a sculptor would on a perfect statue. The evenness of slope, the uniformity and the vastness are sources of wonder and inspiration that make a lasting impression. If the level stretches are covered by fields of wheat or grain, as they are in the vast flat plain of Minnesota and Manitoba, then color is added to form and the total impression is one of the most thrilling to be gained in any part of our country. Color effects add vastly to the beauty of any landscape, but color and size must be studied with form if we are to get the most from any landscape.

To be able to see landscape forms is one of the great pleasures of life and yet it is a pleasure that few seem consciously to cultivate. Everyone may be impressed by color combinations in nature and may be thrilled with emotion which he may try to voice in words. The grandest color spectacles of the scenic world impel one to silence, however, for they can not be described and they are on too vast a scale to be seen at a glimpse. Through the color we feel the hand of nature and we realize that these vast color schemes are on a scale that man can not duplicate and which he can never understand or wholly analyze.

When one looks on land forms he does not need to face any of the great landscape features of the world to be thrilled to silence and reverence, for every land has its own beauty, bespeaking an individual history. The smallest land form-maybe the minute ripple mark by the sea that is washed away by the next tide, or the curve of the river bank that changes with the hours-has an inherent beauty no less majestic or awe inspiring than the mighty Matterhorn or the towering crags that face some shore as a great advance rampart of the land. Every land has its beauties of form, impressive, appealing and beyond human understanding or complete appreciation. If they be analyzed into their parts from a purely artistic standpoint, like the curves of ancient architecture, they have an artistic force that is striking. If they be viewed as wholes and behind the forms there be seen in suggestion the long life history that each form may reveal in a fragmentary way to the sympathetic and understanding inquirer, they offer a source of pleasure, joy and profit to all.

To know one's landscape, to feel in sympathy with it, is often to be at peace with life. When all the world seems wrong and the burdens overwhelming, he who can look out on the familiar fields and hills or get among them and give way to their beauties of form and color has a resource within himself that will be an ever present power of recuperation.

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