.576 REPORT—1883. 
Section H.—GEOGRAPHY. 
PRESIDENT OF THE SEcTION—Lieut.-Colonel H. H. Gopwin-AvsTEn, 
E.R.S., F.G.S., F.R.G.S. 
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 20. 
The PREsIpENT delivered the following Address :-— 
My predecessor, Sir Richard Temple, selected for the subject of his address to this 
section last year ‘The Central Plateau of Asia,’ and he treated it not only from 
a broad and general geographical, but also, and to some extent, a political and 
historical point of view. Following him, in a measure, over some of the same 
ground, I have selected the mountain region south of the Central Asian highlands— 
wiz., the Himalayas, and more particularly the western portion of that range, as the 
subject of this paper. I propose considering this mountain chain with reference to 
its physical features, past and present; and consequently with reference to its 
geological history, so far as that relates to later tertiary times—z.e. the period 
immediately preceding the present distribution of seas, land, rivers, and lakes. It 
is not, however, my intention to enter very deeply into the purely geological branch 
of the subject. 
Comparatively little of the earth’s surface now remains unexplored, but much 
remains to be surveyed and examined in a more scientific manner. Within the 
last fifty years explorers have made known to us the general features of those 
dotted or blank spaces which, as boys, we used to look at in our school atlas 
sheets with so much curiosity, mingled with no little desire to discover the hidden 
secrets of the unknown lands so shown. ‘The student of the present day enjoys 
information more or less accurate respecting countries which to us were mere 
speculative shadows. 
But there are other atlas sheets beneath, and only a very few feet beneath, those 
of this present day, which are closely connected with the latter, and beneath them 
again others lie still deeper which have modified the geography of this earth over 
and over again. It is to such a sheet or two relating to the great Himalayan chain 
that I now invite your attention. If we wish to deal with physical geography 
(and to my mind it has equal charms with either pure geography or exploration) 
our inquiry must, if we wish it to be of any really scientific value, be based on 
geological structure. We must study the ancient atlas sheets, one by one, which 
nature is, day by day, revealing to us by the denudation of the present surface, taking 
away and building up the material for atlas sheets of future epochs. Geography 
and geology are very intimately related ; each is truly based upon the other. Local 
changes of temperature on the surface of this earth, and internally the slow shrinking 
of its crust, have effected gigantic changes of its surface, and are still altering the 
topographical features of every country. Directly we look back in time and space 
and note what changes have taken place, the science of geology steps in, and with 
it mathematics, chemistry, botany, and zoology. A raised sea-beach with its dead 
shells, or a submerged forest with the remains of its former fauna and flora, 
geologically an event of yesterday, sends us back thousands of years into the past, 
thinking of what were the aspect and dimensions of the former land; therefore, 
