Section E. 

 (geography.) 



Peesident of the Section — G. S. Griffiths, F.G.S., F.R.G.S., 

 Melbourne. 



ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT. 



In these clays, when the great geographical societies of the 

 world issue at short intervals the records of the progress of 

 discovery, and when this information is digested, criticized, 

 and disseminated promptly by a vigilant Press, it is not neces- 

 sary to recapitulate all the events of the year in the annual 

 addresses delivered to this section. Therefore I shall confine 

 my remarks to such matters of theory or accomplished work 

 as relate to the Australasian region. 



On the Australian Continent very little new ground has 

 been broken. The general features of the grea^ter part of the 

 area have long been known, and the surveyors of the back 

 blocks of the several colonies are now slowly filling in the 

 details, which for the most part consist of nothing more sen- 

 sational than the plotting-down of the courses of insignificant 

 creeks, and the fixing of the positions of the low ranges through 

 which they meander. 



On the north-west coast, however, Mr. Alexander McPhee 

 has entered an unexplored region, by travelling inland east- 

 wards from Lagrange Bay. Having made his way for two 

 hundred and forty miles over undulating but badly-watered 

 and lightly-timbered country, he fell in with a camp of blacks, 

 who informed him that in a locality that was two hundred 

 miles further to the south-eastwards there was a tribe which 

 had in its possession a tomahawk, obtained many years before 

 from a party which perished while endeavouring to cross to the 

 west coast. This party was described as consisting of about 

 five persons, two of the number being whites. The "Victorian 

 l)ranch of the Eoyal Geographical Society of Australasia, on 

 learning this news, decided that it w^ould be well to explore the 

 whole region from Lagrange Bay to Lake Macdonald, the more 

 so as Baron von Mueller thought that the persons who 



