Historically, the study of regional geography has been obscured by its overlap with the notion of the earth's surface as 'landscape'. This idea is inherently in the double meaning attached in the extensive German literature to the apparently synonymous term, Landschaft. Confusion has apparently arisen from the meaning of Landschaft as either(a)the landscape,in the sense of the general appearance of a section of the earth's visible surface or(b)a restricted region of the earth's surface.