May 26, 1892] 



NATURE 



89 



Call it a 'graphy,' or a 'logy,' or a 'Kunde,' or what you 

 please, it remains the body of knowledge which has to do with 

 the theatre of the activity of man and all things that have life. 

 We may stunt and injure the activity of the next generation by 

 refusing to teach it, but eventually it must obtain the position 

 which the greatest of living systematic botanists claimed for it 

 in 1886. *It must permeate,' he said, 'the whole of educa- 

 tion to the termination of the University career, every subject 

 taught having a geographical aspect.' 



" When, in spite of foolish objections, we had sown the seeds 

 of what we may hope, having regard to the slowness with which 

 trees grow in our English climate, to be vigorous saplings about 

 the end of the century and respectable denizens of the forest 

 in the year 2000, we turned to the training schools, and con- 

 cluded a convention with the Education Department, whereby 

 we engaged to give certain scholarships and prizes to such of 

 their students as were reported by the Inspectors of Schools 

 charged with the conduct of the examinations to be worthy of 

 those distinctions. Then, further, we entered into arrangements 

 in 1888, with the directing Delegates of the Oxford University 

 Extension Lectures, by which we agreed to give, on certain 

 conditions, a yearly grant of ;^6o, in aid of geographical teaching. 

 W'e have resolved to set on foot regular courses of geo- 

 graphical lectures in London, which will commence probably 

 next November, and be given by Mr. Mackinder and other 

 competent geographers. 



"Our vt-ry latest measures for the improvement of geo- 

 graphical education have been : — 



" I. To agree to some modifications in the distribution of the 

 prizes to the training colleges which the officers of the Education 

 Department advised, and which will better promote the object 

 which the Society has in view. 



"2. To co-operate with the Manchester Geographical Society 

 in assisting the governing body of the Victoria University to 

 introduce geographical teaching into the curriculum by making 

 a substantial grant for that purpose. 



" 3. To award a travelling scholarship of ;^ioo — our share 

 being ;i^50 — after an examination held at Oxford. This was 

 gained by a young man, Mr. Grundy, who was bound, under 

 the conditions prescribed, to travel for at least three months in 

 one of a number of districts from which he might take his 

 choice, and communicate the results to us. He has selected 

 Bceotia, and will, I make no doubt, furnish the Society ere long 

 with some valuable information. 



" We continue the prizes given at the Oxford and Cambridge 

 local examinations, and to the boys of the training ships. 

 These belong to the same period of our history as the Public 

 School medals, but with them we have been more successful. 

 W'e are in correspondence with the Scotch Education Depart- 

 ment as to the best method of further encouraging geographical 

 study on the other side of the Tweed, where it has long been 

 comparatively popular. 



" It seems to me quite certain that this part of our activity will 

 fill a larger and larger space in the thoughts of all of us for a 

 long time to come. The day will arrive when it will be of 

 very little importance. Common-sense has a way of conquering 

 in the end, and the proposition that it is highly desirable for 

 intelligent creatures inhabiting this planet to have a good 

 general notion of the opportunities which it affords them is so 

 self-evident, that one would think it did not require a very 

 numerous and powerful Society to urge its general acceptance 

 upon the scholastic world. 



"Geography and history are relegated to a subordinate place 

 in almost all our schools which consider themselves to belong 

 to the first or second rank, while the utmost prominence is given, 

 not to reading the classicf?, to getting thoroughly imbued with 

 classical ideas, and to having the mind filled with whatever of 

 good and great the ancient world has bequeathed to us, but 

 largely to accomplishments in the way of turning out pretty 

 pieces of verse or prose, in the ancient tongues, which bear much 

 the same relations to serious intellectual pursuits as do to the 

 proper works and ways of an intelligent dog the art of jumping 

 through a hoop filled with paper, or that of balancing on his 

 nose a piece of biscuit till he is told that it is 'paid for.' 

 Educators who have given the best years of their lives to 

 these accomplishments naturally abhor the idea of diminishing 

 their importance, and when they are asked to find a reasonable 

 place for history and geography in their schools they piteously 

 point to their time-tables and say, ' How are we to manage 

 it ? ' Manage it by the elimination of rubbish. Put composition 

 in the ancient tongues as a piece of regular ' school business ' 



NO. II 78, VOL. 46] 



behind the fire, and greatly diminish the amount of time given to 

 learning by heart in the interest of Latin and Greek composition. 

 Neither geography nor history will ever obtain their proper 

 position in education until we can get rid of the superstition as 

 distinguished from the religion of the classics. No reasonable 

 man who has a competent acquaintance with the subject can 

 tolerate the idea of the classics being neglected. They form a 

 most important part, and must always continue to form a most 

 important part of literature, and literature is for a large class of 

 minds a most excellent training. For a great many minds, how- 

 ever, it is not an excellent training, and to a considerable pro- 

 portion of those susceptible of being trained by it the ancient 

 languages present no attractions. I maintain that for a great 

 many minds geography and history, well and carefully taught, 

 would be much more educative than the two studies which as 

 late as the time at which I took my degree, not quite forty-two 

 years ago, almost ab.solutely monopolized attention in Oxford 

 and Cambridge. Then, too, we must remember that while for 

 everybody classics are mainly educative, and in a much less 

 degree instructive, and while mathematics are instructive in a 

 high degree only to those who are going into any of the no doubt 

 numerous careers for which they are essential, geography and 

 history are instructive in a very high degree to all, even to 

 those to whom they are not educative. 



"What I think we as a Society should keep chiefly in view 

 is to try to have a clear and connected account of the leading 

 facts which are known about the theatre of man's activity, 

 together with an intelligent idea of the leading causes which have 

 brought those facts about very much more widely extended 

 through all ranks than they are now. We must keep our aims 

 moderate in geography. There are undeniably a few persons to 

 whom both geography and history, teach them as you will, are 

 thoroughly abhorrent. Well, teach the very minimum of them 

 to such people. A large number of people can be cultivated, 

 and very highly cultivated, belter through geography and history 

 than anything else. All I ask for is, that in the education of such 

 people these two sciences should play a very much larger part 

 than they do now. I think that if we could see some thoroughly 

 good hand-book of physical geography and another of political 

 and commercial geography made part of the teaching of all 

 secondary schools, and a subject of the leaving examination 

 which should be borrowed from Germany, if we continue to 

 hold up as we are doing at Oxford, and elsewhere, a very 

 high standard of professorial teaching in our subject, while we at 

 the same time persist in the other lines of educational activity 

 to which I have alluded, we should have done a good deal ; but 

 it is far from improbable that we may ere long see our way to 

 giving further stimulus to sound geographical teaching in various 

 parts of the country. The Society, however, may be assured 

 that we will remember the maxim Festina knte, and not waste 

 the resources with which its members supply us in any rash experi- 

 ments. Geography is rooted in the physical sciences, and makes 

 each of them tributary to her, while history which is not rooted 

 in geography, and which does not learn from geography all it 

 has to teach about the existing conditions of man's dwelling- 

 place, is simply bad history. " 



The President then referred to the year's exploration. Herr 

 Merzbacher's work in the Caucasus, and Mr. Howell's ascent 

 of Or£efa Jokull in Iceland, were noticed as the chief moun- 

 taineering feats. In Asia military exploration had gone on 

 steadily on the northern frontiers, and the Society was making 

 efforts to have the results of such work made more accessible 

 to the public. Lord Lamington's journey in the Shan States, 

 Captain Bower's and Dr. Thorold's adventurous crossing of 

 Tibet also opened up new ground. In Africa Mr. E. A. 

 Floyer crossed the Egyptian Desert from Assouan to the 

 Red Sea ; and in the region of the Great Lakes Captain 

 Lugard, Emin Pasha, Dr. Stuhlman, and the late Father 

 Schynse have added to our knowledge. The Italians have 

 been energetic in exploring Somali land, and the French, 

 despite the disaster to M. Crampel, have not abandoned their 

 efforts to reach Lake Chad from the west. Captain Gallwey 

 and Mr. Gilbert T. Carter have made important discoveries in 

 Lagos and Benin. Mr. Bent's well-known exploration of 

 Zimbabwe, and Mr. Joseph Thomson's study of Lake 

 Bangweola, which ill-health still prevents him from recording, 

 are the most important pieces of work in South Africa. 



The semi-Arctic regions of Labrador and Alaska have 

 received much attention in America, and their topography is 

 being more definitely ascertained. 



In Australia the Elder expedition has unfortunately collapsed, 



