466 



NATURE 



{Sept. 15, 1887 



which would result from a more perfect and skilful system of 

 instruction. 



The term geography covers a very wide area, and while limit- 

 ing its use to-day to the more restricted sense generally accorded 

 to it in modern times, I must protest against its being applied 

 only to a dry digest of names of places and record of statistics, 

 rendering it a bugbear in the instruction of youth instead of 

 allowing it to cover all those interesting and engrossing subjects 

 which truly belong to it, and without the knowledge of which 

 the mind of youth cannot be trained and expanded in the 

 direction to which the science tends. 



As the geographer Strabo points out, our science embraces 

 astronomy, natural history, and is closely connected with meteor- 

 ology and geometry, the arts, history, and fable ; but since his 

 day so much progress has been made in the arts and sciences 

 that the branches of geography have become specialities to be 

 taught separately, and the old root geography has been almost 

 laid aside and treated with contempt, though it is only by a 

 thorough acquaintance with it, the knowledge of common things, 

 that the branches which depend upon it can be thoroughly com- 

 prehended. We may take geography, then, to embrace all that 

 knowledge of common things connected with the surface of the 

 earth, including the seas and the atmosphere, which it is neces- 

 sary for every human being to be acquainted with in order that 

 progress in other knowledge may be acquired and acquaintance 

 with the world be made which will fit man for life in any capacity, 

 whether as occupying the highest position even to the most 

 humble. Indeed, it is difficult to say in what capacity in life 

 this knowledge is most required. No man can do practical work 

 without it, and to the theorist it is absolutely essential. 



The science may be divided under two heads ; that which we 

 learn from others, that which we acquire from our own observation 

 and researches. All experience tells us that the information is 

 most valuble which we acquire by our own exertion, and there- 

 fore every effort should be made by those interested in the 

 welfare of mankind to endeavour that each one should learn 

 everything that can be learned from his own ob;ervation properly 

 directed. 



Year by year, as the surface of the earth becomes better 

 known, the districts in which explorations of an adventurous 

 nature can be made diminish more and more, and as scientific 

 research takes the place of that of a ruder nature the chances of ex- 

 citement grow perceptibly less. Indeed, when we look upon the 

 knowledge possessed by the ancients and study their cosmogony we 

 cannot but feel the loss we have sustained in approaching the 

 truth. The poetic halo with which everything was encircled, 

 the deep shadows and gloom, have gradually been dispersed and 

 dispelled, together with all the distant and uncertain light which 

 gave so much scope to the imagination, and we now view the 

 hard stern realities of fact, brilliant and gay in their colouring, 

 but leaving no room for fancy, or for a change of ideas — always 

 the same vivid rigidity of outline which admits of no two 

 opinions. It is l:ke the change of scenery from our own beauti- 

 ful cloudy island, where the tints and shades change from hour 

 to hour, and where the grey and purple distances leave so much 

 to the imagination, to the bright scenes of the Mediterranean 

 shores, where everything is bathed in intense sunlight, and dis- 

 tinctness of outline reigns supreme, where there is no possibility 

 as to doubt. 



In each case we may balance the advantages and disadvant- 

 ages ; but as we have gained in knowledge so we are losing in 

 understanding. We are fast losing our human nature and are 

 becoming machines, and we call it being civilized. We are 

 drifting into a condition in which we learn nothing of our- 

 selves or by our ow n individual efforts ; we are coming to a 

 time when, as we know more about science, and are better 

 educated in arts, we know less about mankind, and are the 

 less able to assist in gaining knowledge of the world ; all 

 power of doing so is day by day becoming vested in the hands of 

 a few scientific men, on whose word v^ e have to rely. In this 

 progress we are losing all we used to hold most dear ; the desire 

 of living for others is departing, and with it hospitality, chivalry, 

 enthusiasm, unselfishness, and because we are unable to exercise 

 the talents given to us they rust and corrode. No doubt we are 

 able to seek other channels for our energies of mind, but how are 

 we to exert our physical powers for the benefit of man ? In days 

 of yore it was open to any man of spirit and strength and activity 

 to set out in quest of adventures of the unknown for the assist- 

 ance of his fellow-men, to relieve the world of its monsters, to 

 risk. eveiy thing for others. But, those days of daring are i>ow 



gone by ; the doubt, uncertainty, and mystery attached to 

 unknown danger are no longer to be met with, and though the 

 same chances are always presented to human nature to practise 

 self-denial, they are now, though more difficult perhaps, of a 

 passive instead of an active nature, and do not so distinctly 

 belong to the domain of geography as they did in olden 

 times. 



As the people of olden times are to those of the present day, 

 so may we consider the child to the man ; and we adults in this 

 assembly must recollect that, however strong may be our emotions 

 and passions at the present time, they are but of a mild and 

 vapid nature when compared with the aspirations and feelings of 

 youth. Each prosaic-looking child is full of poetic and romantic 

 feeling, to which as a rule utterance is never given, but which, 

 nevertheless, cannot be rudely shattered without injuiy to the 

 mind, and which, if taken advantage of, may assist greatly in 

 training the mind and developing a love of geography. 



It should be a matter of great interest to those who instruct in 

 geography to study its gradual development from the earliest 

 date and to watch the progress it has made. And this is not a 

 matter of very great difficulty, for as geography is the knowledge 

 of common things, and the ancients were more experienced ob- 

 servers than ever we may hope to be, the earliest records we 

 possess are full of geographical accounts. In the books of 

 Moses, three thousand years ago, we obtain our first recorded 

 view of the cosmogony of the ancients, at which time the world 

 is supposed to be a flat disk with water surrounding the land, 

 and this idea pervades later books, and is dwelt upon in the 

 Psalms of David. Homer also held a similar view, and to him 

 is accorded by Strabo the honour of being the founder of 

 geographical science, because he excelled in the sublimity of his 

 poetry and his experience of social life ; and a reason why he 

 excelled is carefully related. He could not have accomplished 

 it had he not exerted himself to become not only acquainted 

 with historical facts, but also with the various regions of the 

 inhabited land and sea, some intimately, others in a more general 

 manner. " For otherwise he would not have reached the utmost 

 limits of the earth, traversing it in his imagination." Herodotus, 

 to whom we are indebted for furnishing us with the earliest known 

 system of geography, also held the same view concerning the 

 earth ; but it is worthy of remark that he speaks in his day (450 

 B.C.) of there being another view, as to the world being round, 

 which he considers to be exceedingly ridiculous, and therefore it 

 may be surmised that even at that early period there were minds 

 that had arrived generally at the conclusion which now obtains as 

 to the shape of the world. The idea that the sun, moon, stars, 

 and planets revolved round the earth was the view in early days, 

 and continued up to quite a recent period, and even now we are 

 unable to prove that the generally received system is correct, and 

 only use it as being more convenient than that which makes the 

 earth the centre of the universe. 



When we come, however, to consider the progress of dis- 

 coveries on the surface of the earth itself, the strides in later 

 years appear to be enormcus, but yet we must not forget that 

 there is an ebb and flow constantly going on. Discoveries are 

 made and lost sight of, and again are brought forward as new. 

 Sometimes after an account of discoveries has been published a 

 second account differs most materially from the first, and the 

 public have to wait for further examination. Cases have 

 occurred, as in the early Portuguese discoveries in Central 

 Africa, in which the plans and accounts have been laid on one 

 side and forgotten, and the territories rediscovered and surveyed 

 years afterwards. Again, sketches of new countries have been 

 made, and the surveyor has omitted to show what is conjecture 

 and what is from actual observation, and his plans throughout 

 have been discredited. In some cases these mistakes have re- 

 tai-ded discovery, in tome they have directly led up to it — as, for 

 example, in the gigantic geographical error in placing on the 

 globes of the fifteenth century the eastern extremity of Asia no 

 less than i5o°of longitude too far east, which prompted Columbus, 

 to endeavour to reach Asia from the west, and thus led to his- 

 discovery of America. 



In gauging the progress of our knowledge of geography we 

 must not, however, simply take into account what has been 

 made by ourselves, but by the known world generally ; for ex- 

 ample, although the Portuguese circumnavigated the Cape and 

 proved that it was practicable to do so, it is still a moot question 

 whether they were attempting what was known or unknown. 

 At any rate it seems certain that in the thirteenth century — not 

 to go back earlier— : the Arabians were aware, of the, fact, that 



