XLI. 



TTfte Storp of tbe 



THE usual definition of an island as a piece of land 

 surrounded by water may do very well for the ele- 

 mentary school and for infantile minds, but I am not 

 sure that it should suffice for any stage of culture 

 beyond the lowest and simplest. For there happen to 

 exist ways of looking at islands which, while accessible 

 to everybody, appear to me to unite in themselves all 

 the merits of a true educational system. Stating my 

 belief in another fashion, I declare that ordinary and 

 common modes of teaching geography are not only 

 dull and uninteresting, but fail to impart any adequate 

 notion of the form, configuration, and, least of all, the 

 history of our earth. 



Your ordinary text-book of geography, "as she is 

 written," talks barely and baldly about the size of 

 countries, their boundaries, their rivers and lakes, 

 capes and headlands, their populations, their religions, 

 and their chief products. These are all facts, no doubt; 

 but they are facts which resemble pearls destitute of 

 any string whereby they may be converted into a neck- 

 lace, and thus made useful and ornamental, both. 



My belief, therefore, leads to the assertion that we 

 should become more scientific but not thereby less 

 popular in our geographical teaching in schools ; and 



