ABSTRACT
If Davis’ promotion to Assistant Professor of Physical Geography in 1885 was the result of his developing ideas relating to the study of landforms, his publications during the years immediately following do not reflect this. Until the publication of his classic paper on ‘The rivers and valleys of Pennsylvania’ (1889D) his scholarly output was overwhelmingly meteorological, reflecting his association with the New England Meteorological Society which he helped to found in 1884 and of which he was Secretary until it was consolidated with the U.S. Weather Bureau in 1896, during which time the Society built up a corps of over three hundred local weather observers. This meteorological phase, which resulted in some eighty publications in the period 1884–94, culminated in the production of his Elementary Meteorology (1894D) but his research into the subject continued until 1901 (1901J), by which time it had become eclipsed by his physiographic studies. Referring to the sequence of his scientific interests:
Davis used to tell students that in his work he ‘came from the heavens, through the air down into the earth, and finally found himself back with his feet on the ground’. ( Rigdon, 1933, p. 61)
