Editorial Comments Facilitating Field Research

All of us remember the favorite sayings of some of our teachers. When I was a first-year student at the University of the Witwatersrand, Professor J. H. Wellington would start many a lecture by stating "Geography is a field science. What I am about to tell you comes from my field notes. When you go on to graduate school, your success or failure will depend on your ability to do original field research." When I was in the Master's degree program at Northwestern University, a visiting professor, A. E. Moodie, liked to say that "If you cannot map it, it isn't geography." Later, in a required class that was part of the doctoral program, I began to hear a phrase that was to loom large in years to come: "If you cannot measure it, it is not geography."