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greater factor thau war in advancing and popularising geographical knowledge. 

 Amongst the educated classes of England, France, and Germany, and, in a lesser 

 degree, of Italy and Belgium, there are few persons who have not had relatives or 

 friends engaged as explorers, or missionaries, or officials, or soldiers, or traders in 

 previously little known parts of the world, while countless numbers have been con- 

 cerned in the new movement through vast shipping and other interests that shared 

 in it. The Press, which prior to 1884 had paid little attention to the outlying 

 lands in question, gradually devoted more and more space to everything connected 

 with them, and continually produced most useful maps, showing not only theii 

 physical features, but also their economical conditions. It is not my business here 

 to attempt to forecast the judgment of the future historian on the more general 

 results of this colonial expansion, but he will assuredly recognise its enormous 

 effect on popular attention to geographical subjects, as well as, or even more 

 than, on exploration. 



It must not be inferred that the popularity of a subject is taken by me as a 

 test of its place in the ranks of science ; but, owing to the widening of the area 

 from which students can be drawn and men of genius evolved, this democratisa- 

 tion of geographical ideas is, to my mind, a very hopeful feature as regards the 

 future of the scientific treatment of the subject. 



I should have to extend my address to undue length if I attempted to demon- 

 strate the recent growth of the scientific method at home by giving you even an 

 imperfect catalogue of the geographical books and papers of a scientific nature 

 published during the period under consideration, and especially in later years. I 

 can only select for mention a few typical books, such as Dr. Mill's 'International 

 Geography,' Mr. Mackinder's 'Britain and the British Seas,' Mr. Hogarth's 

 * Nearer East,' and Sir Thomas Holdich's work on ' India,' and other works in 

 Mr. Mackinder's series entitled ' The Hegions of the World.' As to papers dealing 

 with this kind of work, I will mention those by Messrs. Buckman and Strahan 

 giving the results of their investigations on the river systems of the west of 

 England ; by Mr. Cooper Head on the river system of East Yorkshire ; by Dr. 

 Herbertson on the major natural regions of the world, and on the distribution of 

 rainfall over the earth's surface ; by Mr. Chisholm on the distribution of towns 

 and villages, and on the geographical conditions affecting British trade ; by Messrs. 

 Smith, Lewis, and Moss on the geographical distribution of vegetation in England 

 and Scotland ; by Mr. Marr on the waterways of English Lakeland ; and last, but 

 not least, by Dr. Mill on the Clyde Sea Area, on a fragment of the geography of 

 England, and on England and Wales viewed geographically. It must, indeed, be 

 confessed that in this respect we are still behind Germany, which has been 

 pouring forth a mass of geographical literature of the highest scientific value. 

 But this backwardness is the result of past neglect of the subject, and not of 

 present apathy. There was a current saying a quarter of a century ago that the 

 schoolmaster was abroad. I have shown you that, in a different sense, the 

 geographer was then abroad ; but I believe that we may now say that the 

 geographer is at home and has come to stay. There is a whole school of young 

 geographers — not yet very large, it is true, but zealous and active — full of the new 

 ideas, the new methods, the new hopes of our rising science, and I do not think it 

 too sanguine to expect that when the British Association holds its centenary 

 meeting, twenty-five years hence, perhaps in this very city of York, our country- 

 men will be found to occupy the same position in the front rank of scientific 

 geography that their forefathers held in pioneer exploration. 



The following Papers were read : — 



1. Irrigation in the United States. By John H. Beacom. 



The author began by stating that irrigation contributed largely to the wealth 

 of the leading Powers of the Old and New Worlds, and asked whether it in the end 

 contributed to their downfall ; its influence on human society being then briefly 

 considered. 



