596 



NATURE 



{OcL 20, 1887 



wheat, as all English vegetables alongside the banana and orange 

 can be grown. The high and middle veldts are more suitable 

 for stock-farming. Facilities for irrigation abound. The tzetze 

 does not exist on the high veldt. The mineral wealth of the 

 country still awaits development. The Tati gold-field is now 

 being worked by an English company, but a nod from the 

 Matabele king may at any time put an end to this. 



From a scientific point of view Monday was the most interest- 

 ing day in this Section, the greater part of the time having been 

 devoted to what was practically a discussion of the legitimate 

 field of geography. The first paper, which was more of the 

 nature of a lecture, was by Prof Boyd Dawkins, on The 

 Beginning of the Geography of Great Britain. He said that 

 the surface of the earth was being given up to geographers, and 

 in a few years it would all have been explored. Besides the 

 geography in space, however, there was a geography in time, a 

 field hardly yet touched. It seemed to him that in the field 

 which was open to geographers in recording those ancient 

 changes by which the earth's surface had come to be what it is, 

 in bringing before us boldly and clearly those various geographi- 

 cal outlines at various geological periods presented by the science 

 of geology, they would do as good and as true geographical 

 work as any of those facts which were brought from the interior 

 of Africa or from the inclement regions of the poles. He wished 

 to put before them in outline the method he hoped to follow out 

 in some detail in the course of a few years — a method opened 

 by the results mxinly of the various deep-sea exploring parties. 

 The stratified rocks forming the crust of this earth as we know 

 them were all of them deposited in waters which ware none of 

 them very deep, and were formed along the margin of a land 

 which was in every degree of the same general sort as the mar- 

 gins of the present ocean. After describing the maps put before 

 the Section, and stating the reasons for supposing Great Britain 

 was originally part of a continent not Europe, which he called 

 Archaia, Prof Dawkins said that when he looked at the distri- 

 bution of land and water in the British Isles, from the infinitely 

 remote Upper Silurian period up to the present time, he was 

 bound to believe that some part of the highlands remained dry 

 lands, while the various rocks which occupied the greater part of 

 England, and especially south-eastern England, were accumu- 

 lated as represented on the map. In conclusion he said he con- 

 sidered that hitherto geologists had devoted themselves so much 

 to the study of fossils and the construction of rocks, and the 

 coining of names which shocked them all, that they had hardly 

 seen that if the knowledge of the ancient life of the earth was 

 to be of any practical use it must be in term? of geographical 

 expression. 



Mr. H. J. Mackinder, the recently appointed Reader in 

 Geography at Oxford, opened a discussion on the teaching of 

 geography as applicable to the Universities. To give a practical 

 value to the discussion, he expounded his programme for the 

 coming academical year. There will be two courses of lectures : 

 Course A, on the principles of geography ; Course B, on the 

 geography of Central Europe. In these lectures no definition 

 of geography will for the present be attempted. But, to pre- 

 vent geography becoming a discussion of things in general, a 

 distinct line of argument will be kept steadily in view. This 

 we may indicate thus : the basis — a descriptive analysis of the 

 earth's surface, including in that term the atmosphere, the hydro- 

 sphere, the form of the lithosphere, and the material of its 

 surface. From this we shall reason backwards to the causes, 

 and forwards to the effects — the causes largely geological, the 

 effects mainly on man ; in other words, in the former stage we 

 answer the question "Why?" for physical, in the latter for 

 political geography. Course A is intended to be annually re- 

 peated, subject of course to improvements. It will deal with 

 :the methods and principles of geographical observation, reason- 

 ing, and exposition, with the great circulations in air and water, 

 with the various types of features, with the broad facts of dis- 

 tribution of animals and plants, and, lastly, with the dependence 

 of man on geographical surroundings and the distribution of his 

 social attributes. The classification will not be topographical, 

 and the examples will be drawn from all parts of the world. 

 Course B will vary in subject from year to year, but will always 

 be an analysis of a particular region. Mr. Mackinder selects 

 Central Europe to begin with, because it best fulfils the neces- 

 sary conditions : good topographical surveys give us with pre- 

 cision the form of the earth ; geological surveys are available 

 for causal reasoning ; and a long history gives us abundant scope 

 lor the exhibition of effects. It is impossible to foretell the 



nature of the classes, but he trusts to see at Course B historical 

 students, at Course A those who intend becoming masters in 

 our great public schools, and at both a few who intend being 

 geographical professors, politicians, &c. As regards examina- 

 tions, Mr. Majkinder is inclined to doubt the ultimate advantage 

 of the too speedy introduction of examinations. We shall lose 

 perhaps in the number of our students at first, but on the other 

 hand we require time to train teachers, time to begin the tradi- 

 tion of a school, and as in this time we are bound to make 

 experiments and mistakes, let us at least make them with 

 our hands untied by a syllabus. One method of stimulating 

 exertion is, however, not open to the same objection. Let us 

 have a prize, but a prize under special conditions. Provisionally, 

 he would suggest the following : —Make a list of, say, twenty 

 small regions, carefully selected, not too distant from England, 

 regions of historical and physical interest. Let the student select 

 one of them at will : let him read up the literature on the subject, 

 and then write an essay. Award the prize by the essays, and 

 then let the winner use the money in visiting the region he has 

 treated theoretically. There let him revise his essay on the spot, 

 or, as he will more probably do, re-write it. Then let it be 

 published. Thus he hopes we might help high training, and at 

 the same time produce a valuable set of monographs. He would 

 also add as a preliminary qualification attendance at the Reader's 

 lectures. As regards diagram-maps, Mr. Mackinder advocates 

 many similar outline-maps, each coloured to represent one set of 

 features, hung side by side. Lastly, as to the relation of physio- 

 graphy to geography. It is impossible to teach rational geo- 

 graphy without postulating an elementary but sound knowledge 

 of certain physical and chemical laws and facts, chiefly relating 

 to air and water. This training, it is true, is required for other 

 scientific studies, ani even for the intelligent newspaper reader, 

 but it is indispensable to the geographer, and until the schools 

 send us boys so trained, or until the Universities supply such a 

 course for their students generally, the geographical lecturer will 

 have to deal much with physiography. But physiography is not 

 geography ; it lacks the topography, which is the essential 

 element in geography. 



In the discussion which took place on Prof Boyd Dawkin's 

 paper it was maintained that he dealt with what was pure 

 geology, or the geography of the past, which was not geography 

 at all in the rational acceptance of the term. Geography should 

 deal strictly with the present, and use only so much of geology 

 as will enable it to understand the conditions of the existing 

 surface. Geography begins where geology ends. In spite of a 

 somewhat humorous diatribe by Canon Tristram on what seemed 

 to him the all-comprehensiveness of the new geography, the meet- 

 ing was distinctly in favour of Mr. Mackinder's interpretation of 

 the subject. 



A paper on The Ruby Mines of Btirmah was read by Mr. G. 

 Skelton Streeter. The ruby mine district which lies to the north 

 of Mandalay, between the Irrawaddy and the Shan States, 

 bordering on Yunnan. The ruby mine tract, he said, was a 

 large valley some twelve miles long by eight broad, composed of 

 several small valleys, or rather basins. It lay on the slope of 

 the Sibwee Doung, dividing the Irrawaddy and Salween Rivers. 

 The valley bore signs of volcanic origin. The ruby mines were 

 of three distinct kinds. The first was furnished by the meta- 

 morphic rock, whose mass was traversed in all directions by huge 

 fissures, caused probably in the past by shrinkage. These fis- 

 sures were filled with a soft reddish clayey earth, generally 

 containing rubies. At present they were worked in a superficial 

 manner. The second variety of mine was on the sides of thes 

 rocky hills where diversified strata of clayey consistency hn- 

 been upheaved. This earth the natives washed away slowly b; 

 hydraulic mining. The last system of mining was by sinkin 

 pits in the lower or plain parts of the valley and washing t' 

 earth extracted by hand. 



The Valley of the Rio Doce {Brazil), by Wm. J. Steains. 

 The author in i88i left England for Brazil for the constructior 

 of a railway in the flouashing little province of Alagos. On tli 

 completion of this railway, the author, at his own expense, 

 undertook an exploration of the Rio Doce and of its northern 

 tributaries. The valley of the Rio Doce is one of the mo^t 

 fertile regions of the empire. Virgin forests cover nearly tb 

 whole of it. Gold is found in Cuithe, a district of Mina- 

 Geraes, close to the right bank of the Doce, as also on the 

 head-waters of the Rio Tambaquary, a tributary of the Sussuhy 

 Grande. Most of the basin of the Rio Doce is inhabited by 

 wild Botocudo Indians, who possess an inborn hatred of the 



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