ABSTRACT
At the end of volume 1 (p. 641) a quotation by N.M.Fenneman (1939:355), referring to the landform studies by Powell, Gilbert, McGee and others, expressed the then conflicting role of such studies in American scholarship:
Thus Fenneman viewed studies of landform development as a phase of geology; what Davis called the geographical cycle he termed the geomorphic cycle and considered this cycle to be an element of physiography. Even allowing for all the success associated with Davis’ exposition of the cycle of erosion, which has been documented at length in volume 2, the above quotation encapsulates the ambiguities in finding scholarly accommodation for landform studies at a time of rapid change in both geology and geography.
