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Excerpt from Introductory Geography Since Part I of the present volume is a radical innovation, it perhaps needs an explanatory foreword. Necessity Of Home Geography. - The final basis for all study of geography is actual experience. Yet text-books on that subject rarely treat Home Geography at all, and those that do, devote but few pages to it. This subject should, we think, receive far more careful attention. Necessity Of Other Basal Notions. - Home experience alone, however, cannot offer a complete basis for the later study of geography, because no one locality presents all the features required. From this it happens that the best books have contained some definitions and illustrations, as of mountain, river, valley, harbor, and factory, and have planned to build the later text with the ideas these gave as a foundation. Such conceptions are certainly necessary in the early part of geography; but mere definitions fail to produce vivid, accurate pictures. The average pupil who has pursued geography for a year has little notion of the great importance of soil, of what a mountain or a river really is, of the value of good trade routes, and why a vessel cannot find a harbor wherever it will cast anchor along the coast. Yet such ideas are the proper basis for the study of geography in the higher grades. 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