1106 REPORT—1885. 
runs a railway from Souk Ahras in Algeria to Tunis. He passed several important 
Roman cities, such as Simittu Colonia at the famous quarries of Numidian marble, 
and Bulla Regia, near the station of Souk-el-Arba. He visited El Baja on both 
occasions, and found it, on the former, a picturesque but fever-stricken town, and 
on the latter, clean and healthy, with the old Byzantine citadel transformed into 
modern French barracks. 
At Tunis itself good roads are being constructed, and a modern French town 
is being built between the native city and the lake. But the picturesque Arab 
bazaars, which are a never-ending source of delight to the traveller, are quite un- 
touched. Land is being rapidly brought under cultivation, taxes are being reduced 
or abolished, and a very important measure of reform is about to be effected, based 
on the famous Torrens Act, by which real property will become as easily trans- 
ferable as a bank share. This will be done without trouble or violence, and it 
will be optional for all owners of property either to adopt the new system or to 
retain the old one. He detailed the steps which are being taken for the spread of 
public instruction both by the Government authorities and the eminent prelate 
who governs the Church in North Africa, Cardinal Lavigérie, and the means 
adopted by the Government for the archeological exploration of the Regency, still 
almost a virgin field. And lastly he gave a short summary of the daring project 
of Commandant Roudaire for the creation of an inland sea by the submersion of 
the Sahara. 
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11. 
The PresiDENT delivered the following Address :— 
My predecessors in this chair have claimed for geography a range of science which 
may be said to be practically unlimited; for it comprehends the history of the 
earth itself, and of all the life to be met with on the surface of the earth, from the 
first beginnings of things, and through their subsequent development onwards to 
their present conditional status; it 1s associated in a greater or less degree with 
every other department of knowledge, and is a remarkable exemplification of the 
mutual interdependence and correlation of the physical sciences, for while all other 
branches of science are incomplete without some knowledge of geography, it is in- 
complete without some knowledge of each and all of them. 
Such claims on behalf of geography would, not many years ago, have been con- 
sidered extravagant and exaggerated ; a popular encyclopedia which is still of 
some note defines geography to he simply the science which describes the surface of 
the earth, and somewhat querulously complains that geographical treatises contain 
matter not unfrequently taken from statistics, natural philosophy,and history which 
it declares to be irrelevant and not properly admissible into such treatises. And in 
a popular sense geography is still commonly suggestive only of such a Imowledge of 
locality as may be acquired from maps and charts, with their graphical delineations 
of whatever exists on the surface of the earth, and of the various natural or artificial 
boundary lines of the peoples and states between whom the surface is divided. But 
the British Association and the Royal Geographical Society have successfully main- 
tained that scientific geography is not restricted in its scope to a mere Imowledge 
of locality—though that in itself is a very important factor in whatever appertains 
to the intercourse and mutual relations of mankind—but embraces all that relates 
to the structure and existing configuration of the earth, and takes cognizance of 
the varied conditions of all the life, both animal and vegetable, which is nurtured 
and supported by the earth ; it studies the side lights which the general configura- 
tion of surface throws on the character of each locality as a home and support of 
life, and it examines with special interest the influence which that character has 
exerted on the social and political conditions of different races and peoples. 
And geography does not merely devote its attention to the existing order of 
things as now displayed to our gaze ; in alliance with geology it studies the history 
