io Inaugural Lecture 1889 



a greater distance by ordinary methods of traction, were forcibly 

 dependent for their growth and existence on water communica- 

 tion, and a position on or very close to the seaboard became 

 a necessity. Without these maritime advantages, large cities 

 were an impossibility. Inland towns could grow to a certain 

 size and then they were obliged to stop. Provincial towns 

 in all old countries, as for instance the county towns of England, 

 were before the spread of railways almost stationary as regards 

 population from one century to another. A study of the 

 size and population of such towns (if reliable data could be 

 obtained in the absence of an official census) compared with 

 the situation and area of its food supply would be a useful 

 and interesting geographical exercise, and it might thus be 

 possible to arrive at an expression for the limiting size to which 

 a town could so attain. It would probably depend principally 

 on the fertility of the soil and the industry of the agricultural 

 inhabitants as well as on the condition of the roads. Depending 

 on local resources such towns were exposed also to local 

 accidents; and any excessive or immoderate growth of their 

 dimensions would be surely checked by an occasional failure 

 of crops or local famine. The town on the seaboard and having 

 command of the sea could tide over a calamity of this kind 

 and would go on growing while its inland neighbour was being 

 killed. 



The inhabitants of ancient Rome were fed only to a very 

 insignificant extent by the products of the fields of the Cam- 

 pagna, and with all her power a limit would have been set 

 to her size had she not occupied a secure position on the 

 margin of an extensive and much indented inland sea, a sea 

 which in all directions cuts up and penetrates into the heart 

 of some of the most productive countries of the world. 



Further, just as it was necessary for the existence of a large 

 city to have free communication with the sea in order to 

 receive food from foreign countries, so it was necessary for 

 those supplying countries to be furnished with free water 

 communication in order that when they had grown and 

 harvested their crops they might be able to get them easily 

 and quickly away. A fertile country is of little use unless 



