Section E.— GEOGRAPHY. 



Pkesident of the Sectios-— Colonel Sir Charles "WaeeeiV, R.E., G.O.M.G., 

 F.R.S., F.E.G.S. 



THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 1. 



The President delivered tlie following Address : — 



' The geographer should therefore chiefly devote himself to what is practically 

 important.' — Steabo, c. i. § 19. 



Mt predecessors in former years have used their discretion in the opening 

 address either to generalise on the science of geography or to lay stress upon those 

 particular subjects to which they considered it desirable to call attention. I pro- 

 pose on this occasion to refer to matters which have long been of importance to 

 those who are desirous of the spread of the knowledge of geography, and in which I 

 trust the public generally are acquiring an interest. I refer to the teaching of 

 geography in our schools and the economy and advantage to the State which 

 would result from a more perfect and skilful system of instruction. 



The term geography covers a veiy wide area, and while limiting its use to-day 

 to the more restricted sense generally accorded to it in modern times, I must pro- 

 test against its being applied only to a dry digest of names of places and record of 

 statistics, rendering it a bugbear in the instruction of youth instead of allowing it 

 to cover all those interesting and engrossing subjects which truly belong to it, and 

 without the knowledge of which the mind of youth cannot be trained and expanded 

 in the direction to which the science tends. 



As the geographer Strabo points out, our science embraces astronomy, natural 

 history, and is closely connected with meteorology and geometry, the arts, history, 

 and fable ; but since his day so much progress has been made in the arts and 

 sciences that the branches of geography have become specialities to be taught 

 separately, and the old root geography has been almost laid aside and treated with 

 contempt, though it is only by a thorough acquaintance with it, the knowledge of 

 common things, that the branches which depend upon it can be thoroughly com- 

 prehended. We may take geography, then, to embrace all that knowledge of 

 common things connected with the surface of the earth, including the seas and the 

 atmosphere, which it is necessary for every human being to be acquainted with in 

 order that progress in other knowledge may be acquired and acquaintance with the 

 world be made which will fit man for life in any capacity, whether as occupying 

 the highest position even to the most humble. Indeed, it "is difBcrdt to say in whal; 

 capacity in life this knowledge is most required. No man can do practical work 

 without it, and to the theorist it is absolutely essential. 



The science may be divided under two heads : that which we learn from others, 

 that which we acquire from our own observation and researches. All experience tells 

 us that the information is most valuable which we acquire by our own exertion 

 and therefore every effort should be made by those interested in the welfare of 

 mankind to endeavour that each one should learn everything that can be learned 

 from his ownobservation properly directed. 



Year by year, as the surface of the earth becomes better known, the districts in 



1887. 3 E 



