12 THE CLIMATE OF AUSTRALASIA 



has brought the various scriptures into the 

 category of popular literature. So far from 

 being fatal to art, it has supplied the means for 

 a modern renaissance. 



I venture to introduce these general educa- 

 tional principles, because they have especial 

 application to geography, the teaching of which 

 has, of all familiar subjects, been the last to 

 benefit by recent progress. What passes as 

 commercial or economic geography is too often 

 a mere catalogue of natural products and 

 climatic conditions. Geography in British 

 education has been too often treated merely as 

 popular topography, and has suffered from its 

 inclusion among the arts subjects, and by being 

 pursued by the methods of the humanist studies. 

 Geography must be studied as a science, with 

 methods better adapted to its materials and 

 problems, and with a more exact and adaptable 

 terminology. It must also look below the 

 surface, and seek deeper into the nature of 

 things. 



In the more crowded, settled parts of Europe, 

 geography may not be so useful a subject 

 educationally as it is in a new country, such as 

 Australia. In Europe, with every parish 

 mapped, every lake known, every mountain 

 range explored, unsolved geographical problems 

 do not present themselves daily ; but here 

 in Australasia, geography provides the most 

 useful educational material that is' available 

 to us. On all sides we are confronted by the 



