National Geographic, October 1888, Part 2
Geographic Methods in Geologic Investigation, by William Morris Davis
Well this was every bit as gripping as I expected it to be. Apparently, in 1888, schools didn't have geography courses as we know them today. Also, apparently, the intended audience for National Geographic was men (judging by the assumption that the people who attend school are boys). Also, thank heavens for Librvox. I was able to listen to this article as I scanned in photographs from my family's 1988 vacation to New York City. I made a good 1,000 steps according to my pedometer in the process, as well.
The basic premise is that by studying how things look now, we can draw conclusions about what happened in the past. One of the examples that Davis gives (relatively late in the article, to my mind) is that we don't need to watch the acorn sprout in order to know that that's where the oak tree came from. We spend a lot of time in New England here, from discussing the age of the Appalachians to talking about lava sheets in the Connecticut Valley. Much of the rest of the article discusses examples from the United States. This may be due to the fact that the publication is named "National Geographic" and not "International Geographic," but also Davis makes the point that the United States is the first nationt to make a detailed description of the topography of the country. In fact, Davis says "the systematic study of topography is largely American," due to studies of the topography of the United States done in the period from around 1840 to around 1870. This study was not done by the United States Geological Survey, however, since the USGS was not formed until 1879.
Davis goes into how to tell a young landform from an old one and by his argument, the Himalayas are much younger than the Appalachians. And, indeed, that is still the current theory. The Himalayas are likely the youngest and the Appalachians are likely to be the oldest.
The article ends with a plea for more geographic instruction in schools and offers the idea that models be used rather than maps. Davis's first idea was definitely implemented; my son and I both had geography courses our Freshman years of high school. At least in my course, however, we didn't use so many models. We stil relied largely on maps.
Our next October 1888 article, The Classification of Geographic Forms by Genesis promises to be another real page-turner. Fortunately, however, The Classification of Geographic Forms by Genesis is only ten pages long, as compared to the 16 of Geographic Methods in Geologic Investigation.
Well this was every bit as gripping as I expected it to be. Apparently, in 1888, schools didn't have geography courses as we know them today. Also, apparently, the intended audience for National Geographic was men (judging by the assumption that the people who attend school are boys). Also, thank heavens for Librvox. I was able to listen to this article as I scanned in photographs from my family's 1988 vacation to New York City. I made a good 1,000 steps according to my pedometer in the process, as well.
The basic premise is that by studying how things look now, we can draw conclusions about what happened in the past. One of the examples that Davis gives (relatively late in the article, to my mind) is that we don't need to watch the acorn sprout in order to know that that's where the oak tree came from. We spend a lot of time in New England here, from discussing the age of the Appalachians to talking about lava sheets in the Connecticut Valley. Much of the rest of the article discusses examples from the United States. This may be due to the fact that the publication is named "National Geographic" and not "International Geographic," but also Davis makes the point that the United States is the first nationt to make a detailed description of the topography of the country. In fact, Davis says "the systematic study of topography is largely American," due to studies of the topography of the United States done in the period from around 1840 to around 1870. This study was not done by the United States Geological Survey, however, since the USGS was not formed until 1879.
Davis goes into how to tell a young landform from an old one and by his argument, the Himalayas are much younger than the Appalachians. And, indeed, that is still the current theory. The Himalayas are likely the youngest and the Appalachians are likely to be the oldest.
The article ends with a plea for more geographic instruction in schools and offers the idea that models be used rather than maps. Davis's first idea was definitely implemented; my son and I both had geography courses our Freshman years of high school. At least in my course, however, we didn't use so many models. We stil relied largely on maps.
Our next October 1888 article, The Classification of Geographic Forms by Genesis promises to be another real page-turner. Fortunately, however, The Classification of Geographic Forms by Genesis is only ten pages long, as compared to the 16 of Geographic Methods in Geologic Investigation.