704 KEPORT— 1901. 



Tlie Nature of Geography. 



Granted tliat sucli influence is exercised, some objectors may Urge that geography 

 has nothing to do with the matter, and we are compelled to aclcnowledge that the 

 meaning and contents of geography are in this country as variously interpreted as 

 the colour of the chameleon in the traveller's tale. Yet my thesis is that it is 

 just this relation between the forms of the solid crust of the Earth and all the 

 other phenomena of the surl'ace that constitutes the very essence of geography. 



It is a fact that many branches of the study of the Earth's surface which were 

 included in the cosmography of the sixteenth century, the phj'siography of Linnaeus, 

 the physical geography of Humboldt, and perhaps even the Erdkunde of Ritter, 

 have been elaborated by specialists into studies which, for their full comprehen- 

 sion, require the whole attention of the student. Geology, meteorology, oceano- 

 graphy, and anthropology, for example, have been successively specialised out of 

 geography ; but it does not follow that these specialisations fully occupy the place 

 of geography, for that place is to co-ordinate and correlate all the special facts 

 concerned so that they may throw light on the plan and the processes of the 

 Earth and its inhabitants. Geography is concerned with the results, not with 

 the processes of the special sciences, and the limits between geography and geology, 

 to take a siofile instance, are to be drawn, not between any one class of phenomena 

 and another, but between one way and another of marshalling and utilising the 

 same facts. This was clear to Carpenter in 162.5, though we have almost forgotten 

 both it and him. 



The Principiles of Geography. 



The principles of geography — the ' pleasant principles,' to use the phrase of old 

 "William Ouningham in 1550 — on which its claims to status as a science rest are 

 generallj' agreed upon b}' modern geographers, though with such variations as 

 arise from differences of standpoint and of mental process. The evolutionary idea 

 is unifying geography as it has unified biology, and the whole complicated subject 

 may be presented as the result of continuous progressive change brought about and 

 guided by the influence of external conditions. These views have been often 

 expressed in recent years, but they do not seem to have been very seriously 

 considered, and no excuse need be offered for presenting them once more, though 

 in an epitome curt to baldness. 



Tbe science of geography is of course based on the mathematical properties of 

 a rotating sphere ; but if we define geography as the exact and organised knowledge 

 of tbe distribution of phenomena on the surface of the Earth, we see the force of 

 Kant's classification, which subordinated mathematical to physical geography. 

 The vertical relief of the Earth's crust shows us tbe grand and fundamental contrast 

 between the oceanic hollow and the continental ridges ; and the hydrosphere is so 

 guided by gravitation as to fill the hollow and rise upon the slopes of the ridges 

 to a height depending on its volume, thus introducing the great superficial .separa- 

 tion into land and sea. The movements of the water of the ocean are guided in 

 every particular by the relief of the sea-bed and the configuration of the coast lines. 

 Even the distribution of the atmcsphere over the Earth's surface is aff'ected by the 

 relief of the crust, the direction and force of the winds being largely dominated by 

 the form of the land over which they blow. The different physical constitution 

 of land, water and air, especially the great difference between the specific heat and 

 conductivity or diathermancy of the three, causes changes in the distribution of the 

 sun's heat, and as a result the simple climatic zones and rhythmic seasons cf the 

 mathematical sphere are distorted out of all their primitive simplicity. The wholo 

 irregular distribution of rainfall and aridity, of permanent, seasonal and variable 

 winds, of sea-climate and laud climate, is the resultant of the guiding action of 

 land forms on the air and water currents, disturbed in this way from their primitive 

 theoretical circulation. So far we see the surface forms of the Earth, themselves 

 largely the result of the action of climatic forces, and constantly undergoing change 

 in a definite direction, controlling the two great systems of fluid circulation 



