The relation of this book to the formal study of physiography or geology in the schools will be apparent. The classified and exhaustive treatment of the text-book, while so admirably adapted to organize knowledge already acquired, or reward an appetite already aroused, is not at all adapted for creating this appetite in the first place; a thing so essential to true progress in education. For example, in a text-book, the many aspects of glaciers and their work, which are here distributed in a number of sections (as the discovery of these aspects was distributed in time), are usually dealt with in a single chapter or series of chapters, whose nature the reader at once gathers from the title, "The Work of the Glaciers."
The young reader or school pupil is thus deprived of the element of surprise, of the pleasure of following an unfolding mystery, which was at once the inspiration and reward of men of science to whom we owe these discoveries.
If left to the text-book alone, the student acquires his facts too rapidly and too easily. The result is a loss of both pleasure and profit. The movements of the glaciers and the nature of the movement, which gave Agassiz seven years of keen delight to ascertain, the pupil acquires through his text-book in something like seven minutes, and without either the pleasure or the profit of Agassiz' gradual and inductive acquirement of this knowledge.
In other words, to begin the study of a given science by means of a text-book, without previously arousing interest in the subject, is to assume a greater zeal on the part of school pupils and college students than, it is reasonable to assume, was possessed by the scientists themselves. It was the attraction of the unknown rather than the rapid acquirement of the known that drew them on to their grand discoveries, their illuminating generalizations.
In recording the pebble's story the endeavor has been to cause the reader to come upon the data on which these generalizations were based, piece by piece, here a little and there a little—as did the scientists themselves.
Interesting as the mere facts of physiographic science finally become to the trained scientist they make little appeal either to the average boy or the average adult, if he must first come in contact with them as they are presented in the text-book; classified, catalogued, labelled in scientific terms and laid away (as it seems to him) in chapter, section, and paragraph, like specimens in a museum.
Since this book is concerned mainly with landscapes and the story of the forces that helped to shape them it does not undertake to deal with mineralogy. Within the fields thus defined it is believed that the larger facts, the great moving causes of things, have been covered as thoroughly as they are in the average elementary text-book. In addition, subjects in great variety are touched upon which do not come within the province of the text-book, but are such as naturally suggest themselves in the broader and richer discussion of such topics in the conversation of cultivated people.
Hide and Seek in the Library
Since the whole purpose of the school is to prepare for the larger world of life and books outside the school, special attention is invited to the department of questions and suggestions following each chapter. As indicated in the introduction to the first of the series, an effort has been made to capitalize the fact that young people enjoy conundrums and curious quests in the field of books quite as well as mere passive reading.
The treatment is somewhat discursive, and in this and other respects is intended to be more like the conversation of cultivated parents with their children than like the review questions of a text-book; the review element being incidental, in recalling the topics out of which these questions and suggestions grow. The correlations in the most modern texts lead into equally wide and varied fields.