The present book, as originally planned over seven years ago, was to be a simplified paraphrase or restatement of the principles embodied in Friedrich Ratzel's _Anthropo-Geographie_.

The German work is difficult reading even for Germans.

To most English and American students of geographic environment it is a closed book, a treasure-house bolted and barred.

Ratzel himself realized "that any English form could not be a literal translation, but must be adapted to the Anglo-Celtic and especially to the Anglo-American mind." The writer undertook, with Ratzel's approval, to make such an adapted restatement of the principles, with a view to making them pass current where they are now unknown.

But the initial stages of the work revealed the necessity of a radical modification of the original plan.
Ratzel performed the great service of placing anthropo-geography on a secure scientific basis.