Leading Articles in the Reviews. 



335 



SCIENCE, PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL. 



A NEW SCIENCE. 

 Human Geography. 

 The Correspondant of .\ugust loth contains an 

 article, by Professor Paul Girardin, on a most interest- 

 ing subject— namely, Human Geography. 



LABJLRS OF M. BRLSIIES. 



About fifteen years ago M. Jean Brunhes gave a 

 series of lectures' at the College Libre des Sciences 

 Sociales on such subjects as coal, irrigation, the 

 dwelling, etc. He taught that wood and coal, water 

 and stone, for instance, were an integral part of geo- 

 graphy, and he showed how their presence or their 

 absence affected the lives of the people'^ of the world. 

 The resull^ of his studies seem to have been embodied 

 in a book. • Human Geography," and recently a second 

 edition, su enlarged and improved as to be almost a 

 new book, has been published. The Geographical 

 Society of Paris has awarded the work its gold medal, 

 and the French Academy the Halphen prize. In addition 

 the labours of M. Brunhes have been crowned by the 

 creation of a new Chair of Human Geography at the 

 College de Trance, and the author has been invited to 

 be its first occupant. 



IIIMAN GEOGRAPHY DEFINED. 



While diplomatic or political geography finds nothing 

 in maps but facts connected with frontiers or treaties, 

 M. Brunhes says to his pupils :— "' Close your books 

 and open your eyes on the world, Nature, the fields, 

 dwellings, railways, men. Observe for yourselves ; 

 make geography for yourselves." In order to be able 

 to teach hi> system and organise his teaching in abso- 

 lute independence, .M. Brunhes went to a Swiss uni- 

 versity. Human geography is a novelty of a subject, 

 placing itself as it does between political and economic 

 geograpln, and making appeal to such auxiliary 

 sciences as history, statistics, etc. The doctrine of 

 M. Brunhes is by no means the same as the anlhropo- 

 geogra(>ln of Friedrich Ratzel or the social geography 

 of Caniili<- Vallaux, though the efforts of these two 

 scientist> to make of geography something more than 

 is usuaih understood by the term were laudable 

 enough. Si. Hrunhe-i defines human geography as being 

 much niD'-e the geography of human endeavour than 

 the geography of races and human masses. This fixes 

 the place of human geography among the sciences 

 already < <>n^tiluted— etimography, anthropology, and 

 language - together with statistics, demography, and 

 fconomic geography, all of which have in view human 

 masses, and are concerned with the consideration of 

 individuals and articles of commerce and the estimating 

 of averages rather than the consideration of their 

 distribution. 



PlrToRIAI, .MAI'S. 



Thus human geography absorbs political geography. 

 M. Brunhes begins with the three essential facts of 



shelter, food, and clothing. He considers the dwelling 

 and the path which leads to it, and food in connection 

 with the cultivated fields, cattle, cereals, meat, milk, 

 etc. Thirdly, he speaks of man's pillage of Nature, 

 without restitution, for his needs or caprices, or simply 

 for the love of destruction. This destructive exploita- 

 tion of Nature may embrace the cutting down of 

 timber, the exhaustion of the quarry or the mine for 

 stone, gold, silver, iron, lead, coal, oil, etc., without 

 restoring anything to the earth. He deals with 

 humanity as represented by some 1,500 millions of 

 beings on our planet, and studies the reasons of their 

 varying distribution over the surface of the globe, 

 owing to greater or fewer facilities of life, climatic 

 conditions, and other things. He says the facts of 

 population, movements and density, emigration and 

 colonisation should all be depicted on the map as 

 important geographical facts. He would have the map 

 picture to us a village with its houses and roads, and a 

 cilv with its streets, avenues, wide roads, and houses 

 built or to build. Rivers and other national routes, 

 such as railways, should also be shown ; in fact, there 

 is a whole geography of circulation alone. 



LEARNING BY OBSERV.\TION. 



Having somewhat explained his subject, how does 

 M. Brunhes propose to proceed ? His method is that 

 of observation with the open eye of the world, as the 

 new philosophy of introspection is the eye of conscience 

 opened on the 'inner phenomena. The tourist, the 

 mountaineer, the traveller, all learn geography uncon- 

 sciously. M. Brunhes would have everybody taught 

 how to see the facts of terrestrial reality in all their 

 vigour, in all their colour, as the first duty of geography. 



EXTERMINATION CONDEMNED. 



Professor Girardin discusses from the point of view 

 of M. Brunhes a few subjects. Having applied the new 

 method to the consideration of the dwelling and the 

 migrations of population, he refers at some length to 

 the destructive economy of extermination, when man 

 destroys for the sake of destruction without thinking 

 of others. By cutting down forests and exterminating 

 animals, birds, and native races, man is exhausting 

 Nature in many forms. Reference is also made to the 

 extermination of native races by such methods a.s 

 slavery and the introduction of alcohol. The geography 

 of coal and gold shows how cities which have sprung 

 up in the mining regions are ephemeral, and how they 

 arc doomed to be elTaced when the mines are exhausted. 

 But M, Brunhes is not the first to deal with the stupid 

 destruction by the present generation of much natural 

 wealth. It was necessary to prove that the geo- 

 graphical method is the most convenient to study 

 these facts taken singly and together, and to group and 

 classify them. M. Brunhes has endeavoured to do all 

 this. Professor Giranlin and other experts are of 

 opinion that he has succeeded. 



