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Sept. 17, 1885 | 
NATURE 
481 
between tide-marks (Harmothoé imbricata and Polynoé floccosa), 
and closely resemble each other in habits and appearance ; yet 
one is brightly luminous, while the other shows no trace. 
Instead of luring animals for prey, or affording facilities for 
being easily preyed upon, the possessors of phosphorescence in 
the annelids are often the inhabitants of tubes, or are commen- 
salistic on starfishes. Indeed, every variety of condition accom- 
panies the presence of phosphorescence in the several groups, so 
that the greatest care is necessary in making deductions, 
especially if these are to have a wide application. 
In the foregoing brief outline of the remarkable phenomenon 
of phosphorescence as it affects marine animals, it is apparent 
that, though a considerable increase in our knowledge has taken 
place during the last quarter of a century, much more yet 
remains to be done. I, however, confidently look forward for 
further advances, in this as well as in other departments, to the 
marine laboratories of the country—I mean such institutions as 
those now in working order at Granton, St. Andrews, and Tarbet, 
as well as the larger establishment proposed to be erected by the 
Biological Association at Plymouth. These laboratories, it is 
true, have been tardily instituted, but it is satisfactory to think 
that at last the zeal and methods of the workers have, and will 
have, a better field for their exercise than formerly, and that the 
zoology of the fisheries will obtain that attention which its 
importance to the country necessitates. 
SECTION E. 
GEOGRAPHY. 
OPENING ADDRESS BY GENERAL J. T. WALKER, C.B., 
LL.D., F.R.S., F.R.G.S., PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION. 
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 is associated in a 
greater or less degree with every other department of know- 
ledge and is a remarkable exemplification of the mutual inter- 
dependence and correlation of the physical sciences, for while 
all other branches of science are incomplete without some know- 
ledge of geography, it is incomplete without some knowledge of 
each and all of them. 
Such claims on behalf of geography would, not many years 
ago, have been considered extravagant and exaggerated; a 
popular encyclopedia which is still of some note defines geo- 
graphy to be 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 knowledge 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 maintained that scientific 
geography is not restricted in its scope to a mere knowledge of 
locality—though that in itself is a very important factor in what- 
ever appertains to the intercourse and mutual relations of man- 
kind—but embraces all that relates to the structure and existing 
configuration of the earth, and takes cognisance 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 configuration 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 of a distant past, when the 
features of the earth’s surface were not precisely as now, and lands 
which we see high above our horizon lay deep beneath the ocean, 
and life existed in other forms, whose mute records we possess in 
the fossils—the /¢kha-kant or-written stones as’ they are signific- 
antly called by the people of Afghanistan—which, after long 
lying entombed among the rocks, are presented to modern sight 
as revelations of life’s early dawn ; it investigates what Baron 
Richtofen describes as the reciprocal causal relations of the 
three kingdoms—land, water, and atmosphere ; it seeks to de- 
termine the processes by which in some parts of the globe con- 
tinents were built up with their varied sculpture of mountain 
and valley, of highly elevated plateau and low lying plain, of 
lakes and inland seas, and great river systems,—while in other 
parts land was depressed below the sea level, or broken up 
into the islands which are now dotting the surface of the ocean ; 
and it endeavours to trace a process of continuous evolution of 
life from the primary and simplest types which perished in the 
early ages of the earth’s history, to the latest and most highly 
developed types which are now flourishing around us. Going 
back still further it searches for evidence of the first beginnings 
of the material universe ; it looks beyond the orbit of the most 
distant planet of the solar system, and scrutinises the boundless 
regions of stellar space to find, in the widely scattered particles 
of the nebulz, the beginnings of new solar systems and new 
worlds such as ours; there it may be said to behold as in a 
mirror the formation of our own planet as a fluid igneous mass 
thrown off with great velocity from its sun, and ripidly revolving, 
and then becoming spheroidal, and slowly cooling and solidifying, 
and finally acquiring the crust which was to become an abode 
for life, the stage whereon man was to play out the drama of his 
planetary existence, and be held all the while fast imprisoned 
and out of touch with the surrounding universe. 
More than this we would seek to know, but in vain; in 
passing from the early dawn of matter to that of life, science 
finds its career of wonderful achievement in the one direction 
exchanged for failure and disappointment in the other ; it cannot 
discover the origin of life in any of its existing material forms, 
nor trace to its birthplace the spiritual life which exerts such 
an influence on what is material ; it cannot ascertain whether 
man had a prior existence as different from his present existence 
as the first beginnings of his planet home differed from its 
present condition; it cannot gauge the truth of the poet’s 
prescient conception that 
“« Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting ; 
The soul that rises with us, our l.fe’s star, 
Hath had elsewhere its setting 
And cometh from afar.” 
It whispers faint suggestions regarding the possible future of 
the planet; but when questioned as to what is to follow the 
coming soul’s setting of man, the planet’s chief glory and 
dignity, it has nothing to reply, but is hopelessly dumb and 
inarticulate. 
Scientific geography embraces a wide range of subjects, wider 
than can be claimed for any other department of science. Thus 
the President of this Section has a vast field from which to 
gather subjects for his opening address. I shall, however, re- 
Strict my address to the subject with which I am most familiar, 
and give you some account of the Survey of India, and more 
particularly of the labours of the trigonometrical or geodetic 
branch of that survey, in which the best years of my life have 
been passed. : 
I must begin by pointing out that the survey operations in 
India have been very varied in nature, and constitute a blending 
together of many diverse ingredients. Their origin was purely 
European, nothing in the shape of a general survey having been 
executed under the previous Asiatic Governments; lands had 
been measured in certain localities, but merely with a view to 
acquiring some idea of the relative areas of properties, in as- 
sessing on individuals the share of the revenue levied on a com- 
munity ; but other factors than area—such as richness or poverty 
of soil, and proximity or absence of water—influenced the 
assessment, and often in a greater degree, so that very exact 
measurements of area were not wanted for revenue purposes, and 
no other reason then suggested itself why lands should be ac- 
curately measured. The value of accurate maps of individual 
properties, with every boundary clearly and exactly laid down, 
was not thought of in India in those days, and indeed has only 
of late years begun to be recognised by even the British Govern- 
ment. The idea of a general geographical survey never sug- 
gested itself to the Asiatic mind. Thus when Englishmen came 
to settle in India, one of their first acts was to make surveys of 
the tracts of country over which their influence was extending ; 
and as that influence increased, so the survey became developed 
from a rude and rapid primary delineation of the broad facts oi 
