220 NATURAL BEAUTY 



we geographers should confine ourselves to the dress- 

 maker attitude of mind and describe every other 

 characteristic of the Earth except her Beauty. I 

 should have thought that it was the very first thing 

 with which we should have concerned ourselves — 

 that the first duty of those who profess and call 

 themselves geographers should have been to 

 describe the beauty of their Mother-Earth. 



Say a visitor from Mars arrived upon the Earth, 

 he would no doubt report on his return that the 

 mountains here were so many thousands of feet 

 high and the seas so many thousands of feet deep, 

 and the area of the land and sea so many thousand 

 square miles ; that the productivity of the land in 

 one quarter had had the effect of attracting a large 

 part of the population to that quarter, and the 

 aridity or cold of another portion had had the effect 

 of preventing human settlement there ; and that 

 mountains, seas, or deserts confining certain groups 

 of human beings tightly within given areas had had 

 the effect of compacting them into highly organised 

 political bodies. All this and much more geogra- 

 phical knowledge the Martian would bring back to 

 Mars. But his fellow-Martians would tell him that 

 this was all very interesting, but that what they 

 really wanted to know was what the Earth was like. 

 They would ask him if he had not some lantern 

 slides of the Earth, some photographs, something 

 which would convey to them an impression of the 

 real character of the Earth. And then at last he 

 would be driven to describe her Beauty. 



In the best words he could find he would express 

 the impression which the Earth had made upon him. 



