610 ANNUAL EEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1916. 



of the great Asiatic archipelago, still much remains to be accom- 

 plished, especially by the scientific explorer. 



As for New Zealand, its exploration during the last half century 

 has been carried on mainly by its well-organized survey, so that it 

 is now to a large extent well mapped, while the peaks of its pic- 

 turesque mountain ranges have been ascended by many Alpinists, 

 with the result that the map of what is now the Dominion of New 

 Zealand is very diiferent from that of half a century ago. The de- 

 velopment of its resources has kept pace with the progress of ex- 

 ploration, so that the value of its exports have reached the amount 

 of £23,000,000, mainly wool, agricultural and dairy products. The 

 population has grown from a few thousand in 1860 to over a million. 

 As for the great continent of Asia itself, the primitive home of the 

 human race, according to some, and therefore the longest known of 

 all the continents, I can barely touch it. Unlike Australia and the 

 New World, its great features, its matchless mountain systems, its 

 magnificent rivers, its spacious table-lands, its sandy deserts, have 

 long been known in their main features. But during the last half 

 century very much has been done to fill in the details of these fea- 

 tures and give them precision. War and conquest have here been the 

 great handmaids of geography. In our own great Asiatic depend- 

 ency — India — we have acted on the wise principle that to govern a 

 country well, you must know it well. One of the greatest enterprises 

 ever undertaken by any Government has been brought to a comple- 

 tion during the half century. Nothing is more creditable to us in our 

 connection with India than this great trigonometrical survey, begiin 

 about a century ago and completed quite recently. We have meas- 

 ured every mile of the country ; we have plotted all its mountain sys- 

 tems, laid down the courses of its mighty rivers, mappied its deserts 

 and its forests and its great alluvial plains, which now form one of 

 the great wheat granaries of the world. Many of the towering peaks 

 of the Himalayas have been measured in their heights, and some of 

 them scaled, and those grand glaciers, which the gi*eat Humboldt 

 declared could not exist, have been explored and mapped; the 

 meteorology of the peninsula, on which so much depends, has been 

 and is being worked out on a magnificant scale, while the Geological 

 Survey has done much to unriddle the evolution of India and reveal 

 its mineral treasures. Our wars with Afghanistan have enabled 

 us to map partially at least that troublesome country. Our 

 explorers, some of them native Indians, some of them Britons of the 

 fine old adventurous type, have faced many dangers, penetrated into 

 nearly every corner of central Asia, and brought back treasures in 

 the way of knowledge. But all around our Indian borders our 

 modest military expeditions have always been accompanied by sur- 

 veyors, British and native, who have generally returned vv^ith a rich 



