TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E. 707 



iu tliia countiy. It must pass beyond the stage of a recreation for retired ofFicers, 

 colonial officials, and persons of leisure, and become the object of intense whole- 

 hearted and original study by men of no less ability who are willing to devote, 

 not their leisure, but their whole time to the work. The object of geographical 

 research should be nothing less than the demonstration or refutation of what 

 we claim to be the central principle of geography — that the forms of terrestrial 

 relief control all mobile distributions. 



A Projected Geographical Bescryjtion. 



In order to focus the question it maybe convenient to consider the geography — 

 or chorography, as Ptolemy would have termed it — of the British Islands. No 

 author has ever attempted to give such a description. Camden's 'Britannia' 

 was swamped by archaeology ; the county histories, which are certainly not deficient 

 in number, were wrecked outward bound on the harbour-bar of genealogy. Sir 

 John Sinclair's old 'New Statistical Account of Scotland' in the intelligent utilisa- 

 tion of very incomplete data was a great but solitary stride in the right direction. 

 Bartholomew's great 'Atlas of Scotland ' supplies the cartographical basis for a 

 modern description of the northern kingdom ; but the description itself has. not 

 been undertaken on an equal scale. The worlc of producing a complete geo- 

 graphical description of the British Islands would be gigantic, but not hope- 

 lessly difficult. 



The material has been collected at an enormous expenditure of public money, 

 and is stacked more or less accessibly, much of it well-seasoned, some I fear spoilt 

 by keeping ; but there it lies in overwhelming abundance, heaps of building 

 materials, but requiring the labour of the builder before it can become a building. 



There is lirst and chief the Ordnance Survey, one of the grandest pieces of work 

 in mathematical geography that has ever been accomplished. The result is a 

 series of maps almost as perfect as one can expect any human work to be, showing 

 in a variety of scales from } of an inch to 25 inches to a mile every feature of the 

 coafiguration of the land — except the lake-beds. 



There is next the hydrographic survey by the Admiralty, giving every detail 

 of the subaqueous configuration in and around our islands — -except the lake-beds. 



These two great surveys supply the basis for a complete description of the 

 British Islands, and the geological survey, which in a sense is more elaborate than 

 either of the others, completes the fundamental part. The geological map makes it 

 possible to explain manj' of the forms of the land by referring to the structure of 

 the rocks which compose them. Both the geological and hydrographic .surveys 

 are accompanied by memoirs describing the features and discussing the various 

 questions arising from tlie character of each sheet ; but there is nothing of the 

 kind for the maps of the ordnance survey. 



The ordnance maps show at the date of their preparation the extent and also 

 the nature of the woodlands and moorlands, and this information is supplemented 

 by the Returns of the Board of Agriculture, which each year contain the statistics 

 of farm crops, waste land, and livestoclc for e^ery county. These returns are 

 excellently edited from the statistical point of view, but they are not discussed 

 geographically. It is easy to see in any year how much wheat is raised in each 

 county, but it is a slow and laborious process to discover from the Returns what 

 are the chief wheat-growing areas of the country. The county is too large a unit 

 for geographical study, as it usually includes many types of land form and of 

 geological formation. Before the distribution of crops can be understood or 

 compared with the features of the ground they must be broken up into parishes, 

 or even smaller units, and tlie results placed on maps and generalised. The vast 

 labour of collecting and printing the data is undertalien by Government, and 

 paid for by the people without a murmur, but the geographer is left in ignorance 

 for the want of a comparatively cheap and simple cartographic representation of 

 the facts. 



The Inspectors of Mines and the Board of Trade publish statistics of the 

 industry and the commerce of the country, statistically excellent, no doubt, but iu 



