No. 1.] MISCELLANEOUS, 121 



actual workers in the education of the youth of Britain, and brings 

 its devotees none of the honours or more substantial rewards which 

 may fall to the lot of students in other walks of science. No en- 

 dowment gives encouragement to the cultivator of geographical 

 science — no university even recognizes his labours. Students in 

 schools and colleges must of necessity concentrate their more ad- 

 vanced efforts upon subjects for which they can obtain the coveted 

 reward, and the only Geography they learn is that which belongs 

 to the most rudimentary stage of education — is not, indeed, Geo- 

 graphy at all in its higher acceptance and aim. All this, and 

 more than this, has been pointed out long since ; and there be- 

 longs to myself at least the consciousness of having laboured dur- 

 ing many years to give a better direction to the culture of Geo- 

 graphy, so as to realize for it something at least of that compre- 

 hensiveness of meanino: which German men of science reco2:nizG 

 as embodied in the expressive word " Erdkunde.*' But knowing 

 this, and acting, to the best of my opportunities, on the knowledge, 

 the results indicated by Mr. Galton — in reference to the recent 

 offer of medals, to be competed for amongst certain schools, on the 

 part of the Boyal Geographicial Society — in no degree surprise 

 me ; nor can I apprehend that they will occasion any suprise on 

 the part either of the heads of schools or of practical workers in 

 the class-room. They are precisely such as might have been an- 

 ticipated, and such as (I can vouch from personal knowledge) were 

 anticipated by some at least among the soundest and most ad- 

 vanced of educators. However high may be the estimate placed 

 on proficiency in geographical knowledge — and I, at least, shall 

 not be suspected of undervaluing its claims — it is manifest that 

 the conditions under which its rewards can be sought must (if 

 they are to bear any practical issue) be in harmony with other, 

 and in no degree less import:lnt, objects claiming the teacher's 

 attention. In other words, the Geography which, in common 

 wish many fellow-workers, I earnestly wish to see introduced into 

 the curriculum of our higher-class schools and colleges, must take 

 its proper place in the well-considered and matured scheme of edu- 

 cation as a whole. To claim for it an undue and all-absorbins: 

 regard — or what, in the working of the class-room, such as the 

 practical education alone can know it, amidst the multiplied claims 

 on the attention of the learner at the present day, may prove to be 

 such — is to incur the risk of frustatino the entire aim and of doiua: 

 injury rather than service to a good cause. Wm. Hughes. 

 King's College, London, June 15, 1871. 



