Mabch 1, 1897.] 



KNOWLEDGE. 



63 



tion of Asia by his countryman, Carl Ritter, was of the 

 early Victorian style of geographical literature. Blakiston, 

 Cooper, and Gill were amongst the pioneers in opening the 

 interior of China to European knowledge. The phenome- 

 nal progress of Japan in Western civihzation has, of course, 

 led to a vast advance in geographical knowledge concerning 

 that remarkable archipelago; and slower progress has been 

 made in the rich islands of the Malay Archipelago, where 

 the travels of Wallace have been followed by the researches 

 of many other naturalists. 



The interior of Australia has been opened up, save a few 

 patches of desert in the west and centre, entirely within 

 the period under review. Nowhere has more heroism been 

 shown by travellers, and no travellers have received 

 scantier recognition by the public than those who have 

 made known the interior of the only entirely British 

 continent. The names of Ej-re, Sturt, Leichhardt, the 

 two Gregories, Burke, Forrest, and Giles, are too unfamiliar, 

 to English readers, although all have been honoured by 

 geographical authorities, and the romance of their exploits 

 will some day be adequately told. 



The great island of New Guinea has been to a large 

 extent explored by the British, Dutch, and Germans who 

 administer its various divisions ; and the present Governor 

 of British New Guinea, Sir William Macgregor, has earned 

 for himself a place in the history of the island only com- 

 parable to that of Livingstone in the history of Africa. 



In North America the last sixty years have seen the 

 evolution of a complete system of political geography, the 

 dividing lines of which are dependent on accurate sur- 

 veying. The survey is still very far from complete, but 

 the period of great discoveries is nearly past — discoveries, 

 that is, of the magnitude of the great caiion of the 

 Colorado, the River Yukon in Alaska, or the Grand Falls 

 in Labrador, all of which fall within our period. Fre- 

 mont's explorations of the Far West in the forties, and the 

 Kings' exploration of the fortieth parallel in 1870, ought 

 to be specially remembered. The Geological Surveys of the 

 United States and of Canada, as well as the special Surveys 

 of the individual States, are constantly engaged in geogra- 

 phical work of great importance, in the pursuit of which 

 a distinct school of American geographers has grown up. 



South America was, of all continents, the most rapidly 

 explored as far as its main outhnes are concerned, and 

 such work as has been done within our period has been 

 chiefly the better mapping and more complete tracing of 

 river systems, the climbing of mountains like Roraima, 

 Chimborazo, and Aconcagua, and the exploration of the 

 wildernesses of the Gran Chaco and Patagonia. The 

 naturalist geographers of South America did not die out 

 with Humboldt. The works of Wallace, Bates, and Von 

 den Steinen in the Amazon district, Schomburgk and Im 

 Thurn in Guiana, Burmeister and Hudson in the Argen- 

 tine Republic, will never be forgotten. 



Space makes it necessary to merely mention the creation 

 of the great science of oceanography in the Victorian era. 

 The cruise of the Beaijle, with r)arwin on board, may be 

 said to have passed on the torch kindled by Cook to the 

 Antarctic expedition of Ross. Observations made casually 

 in these cruises were systematized by Maury, who, with the 

 force of his magnificent enthusiasm, has given a vitality to 

 his " Physical Geography of the Sea " which enables that 

 unique work to survive the theories it propounded. The 

 voyage of the ChallerKjer and the progress of telegraph 

 surveys gave a secure basis for the study of oceanography, 

 and many minor expeditions have since advanced it. The 

 time is now ripe for another well-organized and fully- 

 equipped expedition for the study of the oceans. 



Be the restraints of space what they may, it would be 



impossible to conclude without a few words on the services 

 to geography rendered during the Queen's reign by those 

 of her own sex. At the accession, Mrs. Mary Somerville 

 was the best physical geographer in Great Britain, and 

 her distinction won for her the gold medal of the Royal 

 Geographical Society in 1869, an honour only accorded 

 to one other woman, Lady Franklin. In 1842, Frau Ida 

 Pfeiffer commenced her wanderings, which covered almost 

 every quarter of the globe and led to a number of popular 

 books of travel ; and since then Miss North followed in her 

 footsteps in search of flowers to study and paint in all 

 climates. Miss Gordon Gumming, the indefatigable Mrs. 

 Bishop, Lady Brassey, and Miss Kingsley have performed 

 feats of travel far beyond the average of globe-trotters or 

 pleasure-seekers. Lady Baker accompanied her husband on 

 his expedition up the Nile to the Equator, and Mrs. Peary 

 stayed by her husband during an Arctic winter in Northern 

 Greenland. The ill-fated Mile. Tinne lost her life in the 

 attempt to penetrate the Sahara. Mrs. Theodore Bent 

 has accompanied her husband into parts of Africa and 

 Arabia where no white woman has been before. Lady Anne 

 Blunt, in another part of Arabia, rendered real services to 

 geography. It would be impossible to enumerate the noble 

 company of lady missionaries who have followed hard on 

 the explorer and trader into the inmost recesses of Africa 

 and Asia, sometimes, as in the case of Miss Taylor, who 

 went far into Tibet, even opening up entirely new ground. 



The great names of the British geographers at the begin- 

 ning of the reign find worthy counterparts at the sixtieth 

 anniversary — men of the originality of Mr. Francis Gal- 

 ton, the versatility and wide knowledge of Sir Clements 

 Markham, and the scientific strength of Dr. John Murray 

 of the Challenger. Nor are the names of General Strachey, 

 Admiral Wharton, Ravenstein, and Bartholomew likely to 

 be soon forgotten, or their influence on the progress of 

 geographical science to be effaced. 



Abroad, the scientific geographers of the present day are 

 more numerous than at any previous time. In physical 

 geography, Suess and Penck in Austria, Richthofen and 

 Supan in Germany, De Lapparent in France, and W. M. 

 Davis in the United States, are representative of the most 

 modern developments of geography. Elisee Reclus must 

 be mentioned as the author of the most important 

 treatise on general geography of modern date ; and only 

 the impossibility of adding names to an article already 

 overburdened with them, prevents us from paying a well- 

 deserved tribute to a hundred more. 



THE 



ORIGIN OF SOME DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 



By R. Lydekker, B.A.Cantab., F.R.S. 



FEW subjects are hidden in greater obscurity than 

 is the origin of many of our domestic animals ; 

 and seeing that man in all probability began to 

 exercise his power of dominion over the wild 

 creatures by which he was surrounded at a very 

 early date indeed, this is nothing more than might be 

 expected. When animals were first domesticated, and 

 which were the species that first came under the yoke of 

 servitude, we shall never know. The available evidence 

 points, however, very clearly to the conclusion that Asia 

 was the great original centre of the early domestication of 

 Old World animals; although North-Eastern Africa seems 

 also to have participated to a certain extent. So far as it 

 goes, this tends to confirm the conclusion that Asia has 

 been the cradle of the human race, although it must be 

 borne in mind that different races exhibit wide difl'erences in 

 their capacity for domesticating animals ; those of Africa 

 being far inferior in this respect to many Asiatic tribes. 



