Excerpt from A Brief Physical Geography The authors hope that this book will be welcomed in those schools in which the time is lacking to master the bulky books on Physical Geography, while yet the desire exists to devote to the subject some what more of endeavor than is required by the few pages on this subject found in the average school-geography. Geography is considered to-day as a description of the earth only in so far as that will account for the earth as the home of man and his occupations. It seems as if we can no longer justify a purely physi cal geography; now we want to know how man lives and Why he lives in this or that way. The most important fact about the earth is that' it is a human planet: men not only live upon it but also make a liv ing out of it. Man changes the earth, and the earth changes man. It is a far cry from the nebulous mass that was thrown off from the sun ages ago, to a contemplated aeroplane flight across the Atlantic or the completion of the Panama canal; but these are the limits of geographical study, and we have to bear in mind always that man is himself a part of nature. In the usual division of the study into physical, commercial, and political branches, the relation Of the human species to its natural environment, which is the keystone of all geographical science, is generally lost. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.