panied by a two-cent stamp directed to Miss Mabel Sykes, 438 57th St., Chicago, is all that is needed to procure this greatest contribution to practical geometry teaching of the decade. G. W. M. 28 Exercises on Topographic Maps. By Mark S. W. Jefferson. 30 pages. 6 figures. Published by the author, Ypsilanti, Mich. The 28 exercises are based upon 24 maps carefully selected from those published by the United States Geological Survey. The exercises will meet the requirements of a modern course in the high school physiography of the lands. The various exercises are distributed among the different topics as follows: 9 being devoted to the plains and plateaus, 11 to the rivers, 2 to the glaciers, 2 to the shore lines and 3 to contour lines. The introductory work on the contour lines is below the general standard of the other exercises. It is doubtful if the completion of the exercises here outlined will make clear to the average high-school pupil the meaning of contours. The writer has found that it is lost time to use coloring to develop the idea of relief. It does not seem wise to introduce caldera into the work designed primarily to lead to an understanding of contours as is done in Exercise 3. The treatment of the Coast Plains (Exercise No. 4) is admirable but is rather lengthy for a single exercise for the average pupil, even if the double period is available. There is a monotonous repetition in all of the exercises of the questions of location, scale and contour interval, this is hardly necessary. The maps should be located and the student become accustomed to use the legend, scale and obtain the contour interval. In each of the exercises the human element receives attention in a rational manner. Some of the relations are especially good, as for example: Lockport, N. Y., and the old cuesta; the Ridge Road at Ypsilanti, Mich., and the old beach lines, roads, and drumlin at Sun Prairie, Wis., and the populous districts along the Mississippi at Donaldsonville, La. It is believed by the writer that these exercises on the land forms are the best that have been issued, because the matter is placed before the student in concise and definite statements. Teachers of Physical Geography will learn much from this simple little pamphlet, and to those who are teaching with little or no preparation it will be a real aid and an inspiration. It is a refreshing movement in the direction of systematizing physiographic exercises and raising them above the loose nature study methods which have been practiced by various teachers of this subject. WILLIAM M. GREGORY. Join this Journal's Excursion to the meeting of the National Educational Association. See first page of the advertising section for details CONTENTS FOR JUNE, 1907 THE CULTURE VALUE OF PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY-Herbert C. Wood THE BUREAU OF GEOGRAPHY OF THE CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOLS CALENDAR REFORMS AND METRIC REFORMS-Rufus P. Williams 437 446 451 457 461 A METHOD OF ASSIGNING LABORATORY WORK—J. Harry Clo 463 466 468 EXPERIMENTS FOR DETECTING FOOD ADULTERANTS-Gilbert H. Trafton A SIMPLE FORM OF POLARISCOPE-Frederick H. Getman . APPARATUS FOR THE DETERMINATION OF THE COEFFICIent of 476 481 484 485 489 493 A SUGGESTION FOR PRESENTING THE IDEA OF WEIGHT EXERTED XERTED 496 498 ELEMENTARY BACTERIOLOGICAL STUDIES-Wilbur H. Wright 499 502 508 511 PERSONAL OBSERVATIONS OF THE TEACHING OF MATHEMATICS IN FACTORING THE TYPE px2+qx+r-David Eugene Smith DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE QUESTIONS-Franklin T. Jones 534 536 AN APPLICATION OF GROUP THEORY-T. M. Blakslee. 536 COMMENTS ON MR. CAVANAGH'S ARTICLE-Wm. B. Borgers Mathematical and Physical Section of the Ontario Educational Association BOOK REVIEWS 542 542 543 545 545 SCHOOL SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS VOL. VII. No. 6 CHICAGO, JUNE, 1907 WHOLE NO. 53 THE CULTURE VALUE OF PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY.* BY HERBERT C. WOOD. East High School, Cleveland, Ohio. For the purpose of discussion, the title may be paraphrased in the form of two questions. Has physical geography any culture value, and, if so, what is it? The answers to these questions depend entirely upon our definition of culture. A well known dictionary defines culture as "The training, development, or strengthening of the powers, mental or physical, or the condition thus produced; improvement or refinement of mind, morals, or tastes; enlightenment or civilization." A broad. and comprehensive definition, surely; but an encouraging one because it is so broad. If physical geography can do any of these things or produce any of these conditions, then it has a culture value. Does it strengthen the mental powers, and, if so, which ones particularly? As an informational study it is unsurpassed. Its field is so broad that it touches all the other sciences intimately and draws upon them so largely to explain many of the phenomena with which it deals that the good geographer must also be versed in astronomy, physics, chemistry, geology, and zoology. Nor does it touch the physical sciences alone; for it comes into contact with the less exact sciences of sociology, civics, and economics. History and even literature, both sedate and romatic, contribute their quota to its understanding and in turn receive their share of interpretation and explanation. It is not necessary to illustrate extensively how physical geography gives and takes with the other sciences. As a matter of fact there is only one science; and it does not matter whether we teach the nebular hypothesis as astronomy or physical geog. *Read before the Northeastern Ohio Association of Science and Mathematics Teachers, Feb. 15, 1907. raphy. Nor does it matter whether we call Torricelli's experiment physics or physical geography. To know how a fish breathes or how iron rusts is quite as important to the geographer as to the biologist or the chemist. But why should the sociologist, the publicist, and the economist know of physical geography? A sociological experiment of recent date is the attempt to re-populate Palestine by encouraging the Jews to return to the land of their forefathers. Within a few days I have read that funds are being collected to purchase and plant trees in that dry country in order to bring rain to it and make it habitable for a large population. If the promoters of this scheme knew. as the geographer knows, that the lack of trees is the result and not the cause of the lack of rainfall and that Palestine must ever remain an arid country on account of its location and of its winds, the futility of the scheme would be at once apparent. Again, the tide of immigration which is now sweeping over our eastern shores and congesting the cities of our northern Atlantic seaboard is a matter of concern to our publicists. To turn this tide toward the open lands of the west and the undeveloped areas of the south seems plausible enough; but those who are to shape its course must know just where to direct it and why they do so, else it will come surging back again from desert lands and fields which cannot absorb it. It is the province of the geographer to inform the publicist where to direct his energies, and the publicist must become a geographer to the extent of knowing why. That the student of history must be a geographer would seem hardly necessary to prove; yet one has but to read some of the most approved text-books of history to know how adequate, not to say how lame, they are in their attempts to show the geographic influences upon the history which they record. If the student of history would understand why the Russian Empire is so large, while the countries of south-western Europe are so small, he must know that no natural barrier exists to divide the great plains which stretch from the Arctic ocean to the Black sea. To know the true cause of the downfall of Poland, he must know that it was physically impossible for two nations to exist with no natural division in that great plain from the Ural mountains to the river Vistula. Likewise, it was impossible that two nations could exist in America upon the plains |