The popular Physical meaning is better conveyed by the word physiography, a geography.
The physiography of the state is the evident determinant of its climate, fauna and flora.
During the rapid development of physical geography many branches of the study of nature, which had been included in the cosmography of the early writers, the physiography of Linnaeus and even the Erdkunde of Ritter, had been as so much advanced by the labours of specialists that their connexion was apt to be forgotten.
In still more western fields of research much additional light has been thrown since 1875 on the physiography of the great deserts and oases of Arabia.
Lyons' The Physiography of the River Nile and its Basin (Cairo, 1906), and the authorities quoted in those works.