A necessary part of the work of a true emancipation of the negro is a careful inquiry into the history and former status of the people. Such an inquiry, placed and kept in good hands, is a necessary preliminary to sagacious action. It may serve to unite the men of all parts of the country in a work that so nearly concerns us all. There is not, nor is there likely to arise, a situation that so calls for intelligent patriotism as this we are sorely neglecting. We may go far away and rear an empire with our armies; but if we leave these, our neighbors, without a fair chance to develop the good that is in them, we shall have lost our real opportunity for great deeds--mayhap we shall fix among us evils that in the end will drag us down. THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE LANDS. BY PROFESSOR W. M. DAVIS. HARVARD UNIVERSITY. The most important principles established in physical geography during the nineteenth century are that the description of the earth’s surface features must be accompanied by explanation, and that the surface features must be correlated with their inhabitants. During the establishment of these evolutionary principles, exploration at home and abroad has greatly increased the store of recorded facts; the more civilized countries have been in large part measured and mapped; the coasts of the world have been charted; the less civilized continents have been penetrated to their centers. This harvest of fact has been an indispensable stimulus to the study of physical geography; yet it can not be doubted that the spirit which has given life to the letter of the subject is the principle of evolution--inorganic and organic. This is especially true of the geography of the lands. The century has seen the measurement of higher peaks in the Himalayas than had been previously measured in the Andes. The Nile has been traced to its source in the lakes of equatorial Africa, verifying the traditions of the ancients; and the Kongo has been found to cross the equator twice on its way to the sea. Facts without number have been added to the previous sum of knowledge. But at the same time, it has been discovered that the valleys of mountain ranges are the work of erosion; that the product of valley erosion is often seen in extensive piedmont fluviatile plains; that waterfalls are retrogressively worn away until they are reduced to the smooth grade of a maturely established river; and that interior basins are slowly filling with the waste that is washed in from their rims upon their floors. Here are explanatory generalizations, involving, yet going far beyond matter of direct observation. Such generalizations in geography correspond to the recognition in astronomy that planetary movements exemplify the law of gravitation; they are the Newton as against the Kepler of the subject.