Section E. Z^'.*"* 



« ,~tr 



GEOGRAPHY. 



.'J * y\ 



ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENl\ 

 A. H. S. LUCAS, M.A., B.Sg., 



Grammar School, Sydney. 



THE FUTURE OF THE PACIFIC. 



I have slio\\Ti a certain audacity in accepting the honourable 

 position of President of this Section, and a, perhaps, commensurate 

 audacity in the selection of a subject for ray address. " De I'audace, 

 et encore de I'audace, et toujours de I'audace" is, it seems, my motto. 

 The Pacific is a prodigious entity. The histoiy of its Past, physical and 

 political, is too comprehensive for any one man to master. Its 

 Future in the s>tory of the world must be of magnificent importance, 

 but it lies on the knees of the gods, and who can foretell that which 

 shall be as the centuries sweep over it 1 Still, it lies at our doors, our 

 future is closely wrapped up in its future, and it behoves us to try 

 to discern the streams of its destiny. We know something of the 

 Past, something of the Present, and out of these will the Future 

 evolve. When we are supplied with the data of a physical problem we 

 niay trace out a cui-ve which shall accurately represent the plienomena 

 Avithin certain limits, and the shape of the curve will suggest the 

 character of tlie phenomena outside these limits. Still extrapolation 

 is always risky even in the case of similar physical phenomena, and 

 the more so the further we depart from the region of our data. We 

 cannot, then, hope to be connect in prognostications of the future far 

 ahead, but we may hope to be suggestive of the present trend of 

 things. And certain principles are as unchangeable as the ether. 

 And, if I am altogether A\Tong, and Heaven knows that I claim no 

 special sagacity or knowledge, it may still be of some service to attract 

 the attention of others wiser than I to a great sul)ject in wliich we all 

 have so lively and direct an interest. 



Could we but rise at' noon of an equinox to a height of some 

 12,000 miles above a point near the centre of the ocean, we should be 

 able to survey the whole of the Pacific. With certain conditions pro- 

 vided for our comfort, and with sufficiently powerful telescopes, we 

 coidd make out some of the detail on a scale about twenty times as 

 gi'eat as that presented by the features of the moon. At so great 

 a height we could see in its entirety the gi*eat ocean, which occupies 

 the greatest depression in the solid globe. And, our comfort still 

 attended to, we might be induced in our exaltation to speculate on the 

 cosmic origin of the depression, and be able to foresee more clearly 

 the great ocean become a great lake, furrowed by the keels of fleets 

 of peace and war, and serving as a royal means of communication 

 between great nations on the Ea,st and on the West. 



Did tlie Pacific originate in a catastrophe? Is it the groat 

 bealed-over scar of the wound made in Mother Earth in the days when 

 the moon was torn from her? Or was it formed gradually as the 

 planeitisimal meteorites 'accumulated and settled down into the 



