THE RELATIVE VALUE OF GEOGRAPHICAL POSITION 



BY HENRY YULE OLDHAM 



[Henry Yule Oldham, Reader in Geography, Cambridge University, b. Dttssel- 

 dorf, Germany, 1862. B.A. Oxford, 1886; M. A. ibid. 1889; M.A. Cambridge, 

 1894. Post-graduate, Paris University, 1888; Berlin University, 1891-92; Lec- 

 turer in Geography, Owens College, Manchester, 1892; ibid. Cambridge Univer- 

 sity, 1893-98. Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. Author of Geography, 

 Aims and Practice of Teaching; Discovery of the Cape Verde Islands, von Richt- 

 hofen Festschrift.] 



THERE is a factor involved in the consideration of many geo- 

 graphical problems which is too commonly overlooked. That factor is 

 the element of time. Familiarity tempers human judgment, and the 

 constant obtrusion of the more obvious naturally induces oblivion 

 with respect to the remoter aspects of a case. 



The New World looms so large in modern life that it is difficult 

 to remember that till comparatively recent times in the history of 

 mankind it was practically non-existent. 



Ever since there has been an atmosphere surrounding the globe, 

 there have probably been steady easterly winds in the tropical 

 regions, with stronger but less regular westerly ones in the temperate 

 climes. The sea, in essence a vast body of cold water, with a shallow 

 upper layer of warm, in obedience to the working of the winds 

 shows a tendency in the tropics to a heaping-up of the warm surface 

 water on the eastern sides of continents towards which the winds 

 blow, with an upwelling of the colder lower layers on the western 

 sides, where the wind blows off the shore; while in the temperate 

 zones, where the winds are reversed, the positions of warm and cold 

 water are naturally also reversed. 



The temperature of the sea has a marked effect on the life of 

 the organisms which dwell in it, while its influence on the atmo- 

 sphere above produces notable climatic effects on the land. Thus 

 the warmer water on the eastern shores in the tropics conduces to 

 the growth of coral reefs, which are as markedly present on the east- 

 ern coasts of Australia, Africa, and America, as they are conspicuous 

 by their absence from the western. Similarly the contrast in the 

 temperate zone, between the warm, moist climate of British Colum- 

 bia and the frozen wastes of Labrador, is no less striking than the 

 difference between the climates of western Europe and eastern 

 Siberia. 



Were there any new continents to be discovered, one could predict 

 that their western shores would be warm and wet in temperate 

 regions, their eastern ones in the tropics. 



These are some of the salient and constant factors in geography. 



