412 THE PRESENT STANDPOINT OF GEOGRAPHY. 



to the Paraguay, are still incompletely explored, especially the more 

 northern streams. Capt. Page read a most interesting paper on the 

 subject at our meeting on January 28, 1889. In the discussion which 

 followed I mentioned that the Gran Cliacu was one of those regions to 

 which geographers might point when they were tauntingly asked what 

 was left for them to discover. Capt. Page has since lost his life — a 

 martyr to science and to duty. His work will be taken up by others 

 where he has left it. The exploration of these streams, especially of 

 the Utuquis, and the region through which they pass, must needs be 

 completed; for some day they will form great tiuvial highways of com- 

 merce. Farther south there are tracts needing examination, especially 

 along both sides of the dividing line between Chile and the Argentine 

 Eepublic, as well as in Patagonia. The government of Neucinen is one 

 of these, a region with mountain slojjes covered with beech {Fayus Ant- 

 arctica) and pine [Araucaria BrasUiensls) forests and with active vol- 

 canoes along its summits, while its rocks abound in fossil shells and 

 wood and send forth thermal springs. The belief that in this district 

 the Collon-cua (called in its upper part the Mumini), flowing to the 

 Atlantic, has its source in the same lake as the Rio Bio, flowing to the 

 Pacific, would be an interesting point for on explorer to clear up. I 

 rejoice to tind, from an interesting memorandum furnished me by Capt. 

 Don Benjamin Garcia Aparicio, of tUe Argentine corps of engineers, 

 that exploration is being zealously promoted and encouraged by our 

 sister geographic society at Buenos Ayres. 



We have now made a general survey of the unexplored and undis- 

 covered lands of our globe. But the work of geographers is by no means 

 confined to the land. 



It is nearly forty years since Maury published the first edition of his 

 " Physical Geography of the Sea." He was the founder of a new and 

 most interesting branch of our science, which treats of the ocean depths, 

 of the currents and temperatures of the sea, of its biology, and of the 

 surface of the ocean bottoms. In 1855 this was a new field of research, 

 when the Arctic and the CyeJops were running their first lines of sound- 

 ings across the North Atlantic, and when Brooke and Wallich were 

 inventing the first apparatus for bringing up samples from great 

 depths. Since then, through the labors of scientific oflQcers of several 

 nationalities, the gates of this new field have been opened wider and 

 wider. The result is due to the invention of improved appliances and 

 to the persevering work of deep-sea soundings and dredgings as well 

 in narrow seas as in the great oceans. This of course is not work for 

 individual explorers, but rather for the governments of maritime 

 nations. Yet I would urge upon theattention of naval officers, of otticers 

 of the naval reserve, and of the mercantile marine that they all have 

 frequent oi^portunities of adding to our knowledge, andof doing useful 

 work in JV)rwarding the examinations of the depths of the sea and in 

 contributing to our knowledge of meteorology. 



