This dictionary describes and explains such commonly met terms as the Trough of Low Pressure (from the weather forecast), a Mackerel Sky, a Tornado, the Spring Tides and hundreds of others. But there are also sections on such stranger phenomena as the Willy-willy of Australia, the Doctor of West Africa, the Plum Rains of Japan, the Volcanic Bomb, the Anti-Trades, the Bad Lands, and the Celestial Equator.

          Because geography is largely a synthetic subject, the items of the dictionary are derived from many sciences, including geology, meteorology, climatology, astronomy, anthropology, biology. Even the most abstruse terms, however, are of the kind that the student is likely to meet in the course of his reading – terms that the author of geographical works employs but often has no space to define. The dictionary may thus help to clarify and systematize the reader’s knowledge.