Physiographic Articles

Of articles on physiographic topics possibly the most important are those on the several continents, each accompanied by a map in colours from the great German cartographic establishment of Justus Perthes, Gotha. Of particular importance to the American reader are the contributions of Prof. W. M. Davis of Harvard on physiography in the articles America and North America, and of J. C. Branner, now president of Leland Stanford University, on South America. Then read the article Ocean and Oceanography, by Dr. Otto Krümmel, professor of geography at Kiel and author of Handbuch der Ozeanographie, and H. R. Mill, editor of The International Geography. This single article is equivalent to 65 pages of this Guide. Then study the articles on the different seas—for instance, Atlantic Ocean, by H. N. Dickson, author of Papers on Oceanography, etc.; Pacific Ocean, by the same author, with a section on its islands, and with a map in colours; Dr. Dickson’s article on the Mediterranean Sea; the article Great Lakes, the separate article on each of these lakes, Great Salt Lake, etc., and the article Lake, by Sir John Murray, the famous British geographer, which contains statistical tables of the important lakes.

Two important general articles are: Climate and Climatology, with 2 plates, 13 figures and several tables, by R. DeCourcy Ward, professor of climatology, Harvard; and Meteorology, by Dr. Cleveland Abbe, professor of meteorology, U. S. Weather Bureau. These articles, both by Americans, deal with these subjects with particular attention to American conditions. They should be supplemented by a study of the articles: Sky; Atmospheric Electricity; Clouds, illustrated with remarkably fine pictures of the different cloud-types; and the separate articles on meteorological instruments.

The Britannica Gazetteer

What has already been said, although it suggests rather than exhausts the subject of geography in the Britannica, will show that the student will find in it a text-book of geography which is unparalleled elsewhere in size, scope, authority and interest. Besides, the Britannica contains the equivalent of a great gazetteer and atlas. Place-names are so entered in the Index (Vol. 29) that their location on maps may be discovered immediately and the articles on towns, villages, cities, states, etc., are full and authoritative. The reader who turns to an article in the Britannica on some small town or city with a population of 5,000 or less finds there within the limits of a few lines of print the results of elaborate research and laborious correspondence with local authorities. Such articles give not merely location, population, railway service, commercial and manufacturing information, description of buildings, etc., but a historical sketch of the place, in which every date and detail has been verified with no sparing of expense or pains.

The Britannica as a Guide Book

The Encyclopaedia Britannica is not merely a geographical text-book and gazetteer, however. It is an excellent guide book. The same care in details that makes it valuable as a gazetteer makes it a wonderful companion for the traveler, full of literary charm and readableness. Such articles as New York, Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco and St. Louis contain valuable sketches of the culture, literary and artistic, of these cities. The world’s “show” and vacation spots have elaborate treatment—for instance the English Lake District, Riviera, Catskills, Lake George, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, etc.

Besides the student can turn immediately in the Britannica, as he could in no book purely geographical, from the description of a locality, say Mount Vernon, Stockbridge, Cooperstown, Tarrytown or Salem, to the biographies that these articles make him need,—Washington, Jonathan Edwards, Cooper, Irving and Hawthorne. See the last chapter in this Guide for an illustration of this use of the Britannica.

The following list of general articles on geography will give the reader an idea of the great scope of the Britannica in geographical literature. If this list included all the geographical articles in the Britannica it would be nearly 60 times as long. For a complete list classified by different continents and countries see the Index Volume, beginning on p. 895.