A HALF CENTURY OF GEOGRAPHICAL PROGRESS.^ 



By J. Scott Keltie, LL.D., 

 Late Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society, London. 



[With 2 plates.] 



When I was honored with a request from your council to open this 

 new session of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, by a lecture 

 on geogi^aphical progress during the last half century, I am afraid 

 I accepted the invitation with a light heart. It was only when I be- 

 gan to face the subject that I realized its magnitude. To do it justice 

 would take volumes. In the brief space of a lecture I can only hope 

 to indicate succinctly the lines upon which the main advances have 

 been made; to bring before you an impressionist picture, marked, it 

 may be, by some of the bewildering confusion characteristic of that 

 evolution in the domain of art. * * * 



First of all, it may be useful to make it clear to ourselves what is 

 the field covered by the subject, the progress of which during half a 

 century it is our task to trace. I think for our purpose we may 

 regard geography as the science which deals with the distribution 

 of the features of the earth's surface and of all that it sustains, min- 

 eral, vegetable, and animal, including man himself. In fact, man is 

 the ultimate factor in the geographical problem, the final object of 

 which is to investigate the correlations which exist between humanity 

 and its geographical environment. It is evident, then, that before 

 the geogi-apher is in a position to apply scientific methods to the 

 problem which it is his function to solve he must first have an ade- 

 quate knowledge of the data which form the terms of the problem. 

 Such data can only be obtained by the exploration of the earth's sur- 

 face conducted by scientific methods. Therefore in attempting to 

 review the progress of geography during the past half century, our 

 first task is to ascertain what have been the main additions to our 

 knowledge of the earth's surface by means of exploration. Secondly, 

 we should endeavor to ascertain what progress has been made in our 

 methods of dealing with such results. Has there been any marked 



1 An address delivered before the Royal Scottish Geographical Society in Edinburgh 

 on Nov. 18, 1915. Reprinted by permission from the Scottish Geographical Magazine, 

 December, 1915. 



73839°— SM 1916 33 501 



