Introduction

This chapter examines the works of the various makers of modern geography and demonstrates the idea and purpose in their work. Reclus' method of regional description may be illustrated from the section on Europe in his universal geography. It should be compared with the method of Malte-Brun fifty years earlier and Vidal de la Blache fifty years later. Franz Schrader had a life-span almost identical with that of Vidal de la Blache, and he was described by Emm. de Margerie as le plus original peut-etre des geographes francais contemporains. Lucien Gallois entered the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris in 1881 and became one of the first pupils of Vidal de la Blache. Gallois, however, early turned to questions of modern geography and became one of its leaders. De Margerie himself considered his most important work to be his exhaustive geological and morphological study of the Jura that appeared in two volumes, the first in 1922, and the second in 1936.