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HIGH SCHOOL GEOGRAPHY:

FORMING PART THIRD

OF A

SYSTEMATIC SERIES OF SCHOOL GEOGRAPHIES,

COMPRISING A DESCRIPTION OF

THE WORLD;

ARRANGED WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE WANTS AND CAPACITIES OF

PUPILS IN THE SENIOR CLASSES OF PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SCHOOLS.

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CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN GEOGRAPHICAL AND STATISTICAL SOCIETY.

NEW YORK:

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,

846 & 848 BROADWAY.

M.DCCC.LVII.

6126
.07

67477

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

PRIMARY GEOGRAPHY.

Small 4to., 96 pages. Twelve Maps. Beautifully illustrated.

INTERMEDIATE GEOGRAPHY.

Large 4to., 88 pp. Numerous and appropriate Illustrations. Revised Edition, with new Maps.

ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856, by
S. S. CORNELL,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern
District of New York.

PREFACE.

ALTHOUGH, from its practical importance, GEOGRAPHY has always formed a branch of common education, yet it is a fact to be neither gainsayed nor concealed, that our youth, after having spent years in trying to master this science, know little or nothing respecting either the earth's important localities or its prominent physical characteristics. The cause is plain; it is clearly traceable to the character of the geographical text-books and school-maps now in use,from the unphilosophical arrangement and defective systems of which it is not to be expected that well-digested views can be imparted, or that any enduring knowledge of the subject as a whole can be impressed on the mind. A few isolated facts may, it is true, be here and there gleaned. Hard labor may enable the pupil to learn the government of a country, the population of a city, the length of a river, and other details equally dry and repulsive. But Geography is something more than a mere collection of detached facts: it is a science founded on fixed principles, which underlie its details, and which must be thoroughly understood before the latter can be profitably learned. Its province is the whole Earth; and only when the characteristics of the Earth as a whole, the arrangement and distribution of its elements, the relations subsisting between its various parts, the agencies constantly at work on its surface, and the phenomena peculiar to it both as an individual planet and as a member of the solar system-only when these are intelligibly fixed in the mind as a great and enduring foundation, can the superstructure of facts and statistics be properly reared.

With the view of aiding the pupil in the acquisition of this important science, and of relieving the instructor of a vast amount of labor in imparting it, with the view of removing all difficulties and bringing about a radical and long needed reform in the mode of teaching Geography, the present volume (as well as the "Intermediate" and the "Primary" which have preceded it) is offered to the public. On the two works just alluded to, an intelligent community have already pronounced their verdict,—a verdict so favorable and flattering that this Highest Number, which completes the series and embodies the same principles and plan on an extended scale, is offered with less apprehension for their examination and use.

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