680 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION E. 
In 1884 commenced the scramble of the European Powers for 
African possessions and the resulting partition of the coast into 
spheres of influence, whence the explorers of each nationality 
pushed inland in the effort to secure the hinterland and command 
the sources of internal trade. The remotest deserts of Sahara, 
isolated parts of Equatorial forests and portion of Somaliland are 
the only regions now remaining entirely unknown. 
South America was, of all continents, the most rapidly explored 
as far as its main outlines are concerned—(on the great water- 
shed of the Amazon River there are tracts of unexplored country 
as large as the whole of France, of which we as yet know less than 
of almost any equal area on the globe. Tribes of men are living 
there who are yet absolutely in the Stone age, and who, even by 
barter or distant rumour, never heard of the European race or 
the use of metals)—and such work as has been done within our 
period has been chiefly the better mapping and more complete 
tracing of river systems, the climbing of mountains like Roraima, 
Chimborazo, and Aconcagua, and the exploration of the wilderness 
of the Grau Chaco and Patagonia. 
Schomburgk was engaged in surveying the western frontier 
regions of British Guiana and stirring up a controversy, the end 
of which it is, perhaps, not unduly optimistic to look forward to 
in this the 61st year of Her Majesty’s reign. 
The naturalist geographers of South America did not die out 
with Humboldt. The works of Wallace, Bates, and Von den 
Steinen in the Amazon district, Schomburgk and Im Thurm in 
British Guiana, Burmeister and Hudson in the Argentine Republic, 
will never be forgotten. 
Time will not admit of my doing more than merely mentioning 
the great science of Oceanography in the Victorian era. The 
cruise of the “Beagle,” with Darwin on board, may be said to have 
passed on the torch kindled by Cook to the Antarctic Expedition 
of Ross. Observations made casually in these cruises were 
systematised by Maury, who, with the force of his magnificent 
enthusiasm, has given a vitality to his “ Physical Geography of 
the Sea” which enables that unique work to survive the theories 
it propounded. The voyage of the “Challenger,” and the progress 
of telegraph surveys, gave a secure basis for the study of 
Oceanography, and many minor expeditions have since advanced 
it. The time is now ripe for another well-organised and fully- 
equipped expedition for the study of the oceans, a subject so ably 
dealt with by Sir James Hector in his Presidential Address 
delivered in this hall on Friday last. 
The phenomenal progress of Japan in Western civilisation has 
lel to a vast advance in geographical knowledge concerning that 
remarkable archipelago, and slower progress has been made in 
