NA TURE 



[May 26, 1892 



finances. In return for that it is bound to keep open for the 

 public at large, and does keep open, a map collection of great 

 importance. During the last year some 2500 persons visited 

 the map room, which is in charge, as you all know, of Mr. 

 Coles, a most competent officer ; but if we had more room we 

 could be much more useful. We could, for example, store, in 

 such a way as to make it quite easy to refer to them, all the 

 25-inch Ordnance Survey maps. That at present is perfectly 

 out of the question. We should like also, if we had the space, 

 to have a room where any Member of Parliament or person 

 holding an official position could at once be supplied with all 

 the information he could desire upon any of the innumerable 

 questions where politics and administration cross the frontiers 

 of geography. 



"Another of our duties is to collect and keep together a large 

 collection of books, maps, diagrams, photographs, and other 

 helps to earth-knowledge. Of the first of these we have 

 about 40,000, valued at not less than ;f 10,000. Of the second 

 and third, about 50,000 maps and charts and 7000 atlases ; and 

 of the fourth about 40CO copies, together valued at about 

 ;^8ooo. We keep, too, a stock of instruments, which we lend 

 from time to time to travellers who satisfy us that they can use 

 them ; ;^6So worth of these have been lent to Government 

 officials since 1888. A further department of our activity is 

 map-making. We have recently produced a large-scale map of 

 East Central Africa, as well as maps of Persia and Tibet, edited 

 respectively by Mr. George Curzon and General J. T. Walker, 

 while we are constantly publishing in our Proceedings original 

 maps which, but for us, would never see the light at all, or, if 

 they did, only after an amount of delay which would greatly 

 impair their usefulness. 



"The same officer who presides so well over our map collec- 

 tion renders very useful services to the public, by giving instruc- 

 tion in surveying and practical astronomy to persons who are 

 going into countries the geography of which is little known. 

 Forty-eight servants of the Government, soldiers, sailors, and 

 others, of whom twenty-one were employed on special service 

 and boundary commissions, have i-ecently taken advantage of 

 this teaching. We receive too as students, at the desire of the 

 Colonial Office, all officials who come to us before going out to 

 West Africa, and pay half their fees, while our advice and help 

 is always at the disposal of any of the Government Offices 

 which desire to consult us on the choice and purchase of 

 instruments. 



"Another very important function which our Fellows enable 

 the Council to fulfil, is the granting of direct subventions to 

 intending explorers, and you all know what large sums have 

 been given at various times for such purposes. Mr. Conway, 

 a most experienced mountaineer, and a man of large scientific 

 knowledge, started in the beginning of this year to explore the 

 glaciers of the Karakorum. He received from us ;^250 towards 

 his expenses, and a conditional promise of more. 



"To Mr. Pratt, who read atoneof the Society's meetings a very 

 valuable paper on North- Western China more than a year ago, 

 and who is now going through the regions, first clearly revealed 

 to science by Mr. Bales in his delightful "Naturalist on the 

 Amazons," to explore the still unknown or little known regions 

 in the extensive valley of that great river, we have given a grant 

 of j^'ioo, and have lent him instruments. If he adds consider- 

 ably to geographical knowledge, our contribution may be in- 

 creased at a later period. We have given a small grant in 

 aid of a proposed inquiry into the Housta language and people. 

 To Dr. Nansen we have voted ;£^300, The object of his ex- 

 pedition, it should be remembered, is not so much to reach the 

 North Pole, as to explore the unknown Arctic region. This he 

 proposes to effect, not by following the coast line of Greenland or 

 Franz Josef Land, which might be the best plan if their coast 

 lines extend much beyond the points already known ; but to 

 reach the edge of the hitherto untravelled region by the help of 

 the surface currents which he believes cross the Polar region from 

 Siberia towards Greenland. 



" In the beginning of the year we published a circular prepared 

 by the Orthographical Committee of the Council upon the 

 spelling of geographical names. This was done in pursuance of 

 the policy announced in the Proceedings for 1885, p. 535 — a 

 policy in which we were encouraged by observing that the charts 

 and maps issued during the last six years by the Admiralty and 

 War Office have conformed to our views ; that the Foreign and 

 Colonial Offices have done the same, and that the Government of 

 the United States of America has adopted a very similar system. 



NO. 1178, VOL. 46] 



" The death of Mr. Bates rendered vacant the office of Assistant 

 Secretary, and the Council felt sure that it would consult the 

 best interests of the Society by promoting to that position our 

 late librarian, Mr. Keltic, who was made at ths same time 

 editor of the Society's publications. The vacancy caused by 

 this promotion was filled after a very careful consideration by the 

 appointment of Dr. H. R. Mill, who has done much already for 

 scientific geography. Our cartographical department has been 

 strengthened by the accession of Mr. Darbishire, a highly 

 promising pupil of Mr. Mackinder's at Oxford, who has also had 

 an excellent German training. 



" The Council has requested three gentlemen, well known to 

 the Society, to represent it at one or other of the Congresses to 

 be held at Madrid, in the neighbourhood of Huelva, and at 

 Genoa, in honour of the fourth centenary of the discovery of 

 America by Columbus. The attention of many I address was 

 doubtless called to the Congress at Berne, where, by the way, 

 England ' was conspicuous by its absence ' in the Educational 

 Section. A strong wish was expressed there that the next 

 Congress should meet in London, and the necessary steps have 

 been taken to comply with that wish. A committee, of which 

 Major Darwin is the head, is now engaged in initiating arrange- 

 ments for a Geographical Congress to be held in 1895. 



" Hardly inferior in importance to the duty of assisting well- 

 considered exploration and supplying true explorers with an 

 audience to applaud their discoveries — a duty laid upon the 

 Society by all its past — is the duty laid upon it by the necessities 

 of the present to assist in the wider diffusion of geographical 

 instruction. 



"In our attempts to increase the amount and improve the quality 

 of geographical teaching in the country we had to put up with 

 some grievous disappointments. We began as far back as 1869 

 by giving medals to be competed for by the principal English 

 schools. Two schools, and two only, distinguished themselves 

 in the competitions — Dalwich College and Liverpool College. 

 As to the fourteen others, the less said the better. The Society, 

 however, had no idea of allowing itself to be beaten by the 

 vis inertice or laches of individuals. Mr. Freshfield, one of 

 our honorary secretaries, himself an Etonian, was possessed with 

 a perfect passion for giving to others the advantages in 

 respect of geographical instruction which he had not enjoyed in 

 boyhood. Mr. Bates, our late excellent assistant secretary, pon- 

 dered long, as was his wont, as to whether we ought to throw a 

 substantial portion of our strength into improving education, and 

 having come to an affirmative conclusion, took the matter up 

 with characteristic energy. The Council was of the same mind, 

 and ere long it was determined — 



"I. To send Mr. Keltic to report upon geographical teaching 

 at home and abroad. 



"2. To open, under the auspices of the Society, an Educational 

 Exhibition, in which all the best appliances for. the teaching of 

 geography should be brought together. 



" Mr. Keltic accordingly commenced his investigations, travel- 

 ling very widely while he carried them into effect. His Report 

 was published, and excited much attention. The Exhibition 

 was open during December 1885 and January 1886, and was 

 visited by several thousands of persons interested in education. 

 The collection contained in it has been lent to the Teachers' 

 Guild, and is now exhibited in the museum of that body in 

 Gower Street. 



" The movement thus inaugurated resulted in various changes 

 in our policy. We concluded a treaty with the University of 

 Oxford in 1887, and with Cambridge in 1888, by which it was 

 stipulated that we should go shares with each of these learned 

 bodies in paying the salary of a lecturer to teach geography to 

 such of their members as choose to avail themselves of his 

 services. An argument, if it deserves the name, has some- 

 times been advanced, to the effect that we should not teach 

 geography at our Universities, ' because it is a graphy and not 

 a logy ! ' 



"Throughout Germany the question has been settled. In 

 that country, as well as in Austria and elsewhere, professors 

 of geography are lecturing, and lecturing to excellent pur- 

 pose, without interfering either with the domain of their 

 historical colleagues on the one side or their geological col- 

 leagues on the other. Whether it is taught or not taught in 

 schools and Universities, geography must in the nature of things 

 rule the territory in which the sciences relating to organic life, 

 from history down to the structure of the humblest animate 

 thing, meet the sciences which have to do with inorganic nature. 



