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- Title: Geomorpholog, An Introduction to Landforms
- Author: Charles Andrew Cotton
- Publisher: Jhon Wiley & Sons
- Pages: 528
Geomorphology makes its appeal not only to geologists and geographers but also to all who love Nature and have eyes for the natural landscape. To geologists the form of the surface is of interest because landforms result from the operation and interaction of processes which are active also in the production, transportation, and deposition of the materials that make rocks. It has a further interest which transcends this, however, in that it gives access to a record which is in many cases the only record available of a late period in the history of the earth very scantily documented by stratigraphy.
Farther back in geological history, indeed, there are many gaps in the stratigraphical record, erosion intervals marked by unconformities, the correct interpretation of which can be made possible only by analogy of buried landscapes with landforms and landscapes as they exist to-day.
Geography on the other hand, is concerned with the surface of the earth as the environment of organised beings and notably as the abode of man. From the geographical point of view, therefore, geomorphology is concerned with the description of the natural landscape and the classification and labelling of landforms. For this reason the science has advanced largely as a development of the method of “explanatory description” advocated by W. M. Davis. In the present book the treatment is intentionally Davisian in the sense that explanation is assumed to be a necessary part of landscape description.
The presentation of the “normal” cycle is Davisian also; for Davis’s down-wearing theory is accepted in explanation of the origin of peneplains without reference to alternative hypotheses of slope retreat.
I am particularly grateful to all those colleagues and correspondents who have supplied me with and allowed me to use illustrative material; and I am no less indebted to the professional photographers whose keen eye for scenic beauty has so often led to the production of pictures of the greatest value as illustrations of landforms. Wherever it has been possible acknowledgment for the illustrations has been made in credit lines.