554 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1913. 



of human enterprise and endurance have shown no change; we need 

 no list of names to prove that they were alike in the days of the 

 earliest explorations, of the discovery of the New World, or of the 

 sea route to India, of the " Principall Navigations," or of this final 

 attainment of the poles. The love of adventure and the gifts of 

 courage and endurance have remained the same ; the order of discov- 

 ery has been determined rather by the play of imagination upon ac- 

 cumulated knowledge, suggesting new methods and developing ap- 

 propriate inventions. Men have dared to do risky things with inad- 

 equate appliances, and in doing so have shown how the appliances 

 may be improved and how new enterprises may become possible as 

 well as old ones easier and safer. As we come to the end of these 

 " great explorations," and are restricted more and more to investiga- 

 tions of a less striking sort, it is well to remember that in geography, 

 as in all other sciences, research continues to make as great demands 

 as ever upon those same qualities and that the same recognition is 

 due to those who continue in patient labor. 



When we look into the future of geographical study it appears that 

 for some time to come we shall still be largely dependent upon work 

 similar to that of the pioneer type to which I have referred, the work 

 of perfecting the geographer's principal weapon, the map. There 

 are mau}'^ parts of the world about which we can say little except 

 that we know the^^ exist ; even the topographical map, or the mate- 

 rial for making it, is wanting; and of only a few regions are there 

 really adequate distributional maps of any kind. These matters 

 have been brought before this section and discussed very fully in 

 recent years, so I need say no more about them, except perhaps to 

 express the hope and belief that the production of topographical 

 maps of difficult regions may soon be greatly facilitated and accel- 

 erated with the help of the new art of flying, 



I wish to-day rather to ask your attention for a short time to a 

 phase of pioneer exploration which has excited an increasing amount 

 of interest in recent years. Civilized man is, or ought to be, begin- 

 ning to realize that in reducing more and more of the available sur- 

 face of the earth to what he considers a habitable condition he is 

 making so much progress, and making it so rapidly, that the problem 

 of finding suitable accommodations for his increasing num.bers must 

 become urgent in a few generations. We are getting into the posi- 

 tion of the merchant whose trade is constantly expanding and who 

 foresees that his premises will shortly be too small for him. In our 

 case removal to more commodious premises elsewhere seems impos- 

 sible — we are not likely to find a means of migrating to another 

 planet — so we are driven to consider means of rebuilding on the old 

 site and so making the best of what we have that our business may 

 not suffer. 



