TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 12] 
(further off). Again, the popular notion of myths is that they are free and un- 
restricted growths of fancy, and that the study of such baseless, unsubstantial 
fabrics of the imagination can lead to no precise or scientific results. But wider 
Imowledge must dissipate this idea by showing that myths are intellectual deve- 
lopments to be traced to definite causes, like other products of the human mind. 
Thus the myth that on a certain hill there was a battle of giants and monsters, 
will be probably interpreted by the fact that great fossil bones are really found on 
the spot. Again, the story of the presence of a race of men with tails in a parti- 
cular district is apt to indicate the real existence of a tribe of aborigines or outcasts, 
like the Miautsze of China or the Cagots of France. The author dwelt especially 
on two “ philosophic myths,” invented again and again in the infancy of science to 
account for strictly physical phenomena. The Polynesian myth of Mafuie, the 
subterranean god who causes the earthquake by shifting from shoulder to shoulder 
the earth which he carries, and many other similar myths, come under the common 
heading of myths of an earth-bearer, formed in various regions to account for the 
occurrence of earthquakes. The myth of the Guaranis of Brazil, that a jaguar and 
a huge dog pursue the sun and moon and devour them, which causes eclipses, is 
an instance from the widespread group of eclipse-myths of a similar kind. On 
this and other evidence the writer argued for the possibility of discovering in the 
phenomena of civilization, as in vegetable and animal structure, the presence of 
distinct laws, and attributed the now backward state of the science of culture to 
e non-adoption of the systematic methods of classification familiar to the natu- 
ralist. 
GEOGRAPHY AND ETHNOLOGY. 
Address by Capt. Ricmarps, RNV., F.R.S., President of the Section. 
On the present occasion of opening the Section of Geography, and the science which 
has been associated with it, it is not my purpose to impose upon you any set address, 
or to enter into any of the detail of geographical research during the past year; 
and my reasons for departing from what appears to haye grown into a practice of 
late, are, first, that the nature of my official duties have not left me the leisure 
to do so; and secondly, the geographical events of that period have been so amply 
dealt with by the President of the Royal Geographical Society, in his Annual 
Address delivered in May last, and printed in the Society’s Proceedings, that a 
repetition of them seems unnecessary, and would probably be wearying. I shall, 
therefore, with your indulgence, in the few remarks which may occur to me on 
this occasion, confine myself to a consideration or brief review of the general state 
of our geographical knowledge, adverting to those portions of the earth’s surface 
to which the attention and the labours of future explorers may be advantageously 
directed, and dwelling briefly on the results which are certain to follow those 
labours in the interests of knowledge and science, and of humanity, no less than 
in those of the national honour and credit, keeping in view, so far as I may, the 
present and the future, rather than the past. 
The Science of Geography, as accepted in its ordinary and every-day sense, is 
within easy reach of us all: 1t requires no abstruse knowledge to follow its study 
or its discoveries, or to unrayel its mysteries, if there are any; thus the navigator, 
the traveller, the ordinary observer may be, and are, geographers in this sense ; 
yet, regarded under its many aspects, euch of them bearing practically more or less 
on all that concerns the existence and well-being of the human race, limited only 
by the earth’s surface which it is its province to describe, embracing as it does, 
within its sphere, most other branches of physical science, it must be confessed 
that is not the least important of them, nor is it surprising that it should be one of 
the most popular, or that men should have been found in all ages ready to sacrifice 
their ease and comfort, their fortunes, or to hazard their lives in the pursuit of any 
geographical adventure which might seem to offer a possible or even impossible 
path to fame and distinction, : 
