PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS, 569 
in commerce. The precious metals and precious stones still indeed retain a 
good deal of their former importance. But very few vegetable or animal pro- 
ducts can be put in the same category. Rubber, indeed, may be reckoned as one, 
and very handsome profits are reaped from some rubber estates. But everyone 
knows that such exceptional profits can be reaped only for a short time. Of 
animal products ornamental feathers are the most valuable in proportion to their 
bulk. Egrets’ feathers, I believe, are seldom worth less and often worth a good deal 
more than twice their weight in gold, but ornamental feathers altogether make 
up less than a third of 1 per cent. of the total value of British imports. 
Perhaps the greatest feature of modern commerce is the unparalleled manner 
in which it has promoted the increase of population nearly all the world over. 
Rendering it possible for manufacturing and commercial peoples to depend in a 
very large measure for their very means of subsistence on supplies brought from 
the ends of the earth, it is rapidly pushing the settlement of vacant land to the 
base of the mountains and the edge of the desert. Fifteen years ago Professor 
Bryce said, ‘We may conjecture that within the lifetime of persons now living 
the outflow from Europe to North America will have practically stopped.’ We 
are at least nearing the time when the ‘new lands’ of this earth in the 
temperate zone will all have been allotted. The results of such a check 
to expansion after a long period of stimulation to expansion must be momen- 
tous, but what the nature of these results will be I for one confess that I 
am unable to foresee. I am, however, convinced that, if we are to be enabled 
to make any probable forecast as to the course of future development, one of the 
most important aids to that result must consist in the study of the relations of 
geography and history from the point of view which I have endeavoured to 
indicate. To study these relations merely with reference to the immediate causes 
and effects of wars and treaties gives little real insight into the working of 
geographical influences in history. As in the study of the human body medical 
men have recognised the necessity of ascertaining with the aid of the microscope 
the normal functions of the cells of which the body is composed, the pathological 
states that interfere with their normal working, and the effects on one part of 
the body of minute disturbances of function in another part, so in tracing the 
course of history it is becoming more and more recognised that the minute gradual 
silent changes must be inquired into and taken into account, not merely in 
relation to the regions in which they take place, but in relation, it may be, to 
regions far distant. Such studies, it is true, are not confined to the geographer. 
In them, indeed, the geographer must seek the aid of workers in other fields ; but 
there can hardly be a doubt that it must help greatly towards arriving at a sound 
solution of the problems presented to keep steadily before one the geographical 
point of view. The field for such studies is of course immense, the material 
perhaps not all that could be wished ; but I can imagine no task more delightful 
for those who have the opportunity to engage in it than that of seeking out and 
examining from that point of view such material as actually exists. 
The following Papers were then read :— 
1. The District of Jederen in Southern Norway.” 
By O. J. R. Howartn, 1.4. 
The district of Jederen extends south of the port of Stavanger, on the Birkren 
Fjord. South of this fjord is the principal of the few interruptions to the skjer- 
gaard, or great fence of islands which protects practically the whole coast of 
Norway. At first this coast is unbroken, low, and shingly, backed by a slightly 
undulating coastal belt, bare and abounding in peat-bogs, from the landward edge 
of which hills rise abruptly. There then succeeds a coast with rocky prominences 
1 «The Migrations of the Races of Men considered Historically,’ in the Scottish 
Geographical Magazine, 1892, p. 419. 
* To be published in full in the Geographicat Journal. 
