TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 199 



our owu. Wo have purposes to fulfil, wliich are not easily to be fuUilled elsewhere ; 

 and, on the other hand, tliere are many functions performed by Geographical 

 Societies "which we could not attempt •without certain failure. Our peculiarities 

 lie in the brief duration of our existence, combined with extraordinary opportunities 

 for ventilating new ideas and plans, and of promoting the success of those that 

 deserve to succeed. AVe are constituents of a great scientific organization, which 

 enables us to secure the attention of representati-\'es of all branches of science to 

 any projects in which we are engaged; and if those projects have enough merit to 

 earn their deliberate approval, they are sure of the hearty and powerful support of 

 the whole British Association. 



These considerations indicate the class of subjects to which our brief existence 

 may be devoted with most profit. They are such as may lead to a definite proposal 

 being made by the Committee of our Section for the aid of the Association generally ; 

 and there are others, of high popular interest, which cannot be thoroughly discussed 

 except by a mixed assemblage, which includes persons who are keen ci'itics though 

 not pure geographers, and who have some wholesome irreverence for what Lord 

 Bacon would have called " the idols of the geographical den." 



We may congratulate ourselves that many excellent memoirs will be submitted 

 to us, which fulfil one or other of these conditions. They will come before us in 

 due order, and it is needless that I shoidd occupy your attention by imperfect 

 anticipations of them. But I must say that their variety testifies to the abundance 

 of the objects of geographical pursuit, other than exploration. There is no reason 

 to fear that the most interesting occupation of geographers will be gone when the 

 main features of all the world are known ; on the contrary, it is to be desired, in 

 the interests of the living pursuit of our science, that the primary facts should be 

 well ascertained, in order that geographers maj' have adequate materials, and more 

 leisure to devote themselves to principles and relations. I look forward with 

 eagerness to the growth of Geography as a science, in the usually accepted sense of 

 that word ; for its problems are as numerous, as interesting, and as intricate as 

 those of any other. The configuration of every land, its soil, its vegetable covering, 

 its rivers, its climate, its animal and human inhabitants act and react upon one 

 another. It is the highest problon of Geography to analyze their correlations, and 

 to sift the casual from the essential. The more accurately the crude facts are 

 known, the more surely will induction proceed, the further will it go, and, as the 

 analogy of other sciences assures us, the interest of its results will in no way 

 diminish. 



As a comparatively simple instance of this, I would mention the mutual effects 

 of climate and vegetation, on which we are at present very imperfectly informed, 

 though I hope we shall learn much that is new and valuable during this Jleeting. 

 Certain general facts are familiar to us — namely, tliat rain falling upou a bai-ren 

 country drains away immediately. It ravages the hill-slopes, rushes in torrents 

 over the plains, and rapidly finds its way to the sea, either by rivers or by subter- 

 ranean watercourses, leaving the land unrefreshed and unproductive. On the other 

 hand, if a mantle of forest be nursed into existence, the efiects of each rainfall are 

 far less sudden and transient. The water has to soak through much vegetation 

 and humus before it is free to run over the sm-face ; and when it does so, the 

 rapidity of its course is checked by the stems of the vegetation: consequently 

 the rain-supplies are held back and stored by the action of the forest, and the 

 climate among the trees becomes more equable and humid. We also are familiar 

 with the large difl'erences between the heat-radiating power of the forest and of 

 the desert, also between the amount of their evaporation ; but we have no accurate 

 knowledge of any of these data. Still less do we know about the influences of 

 forest and desert on the rate of passage, or upon the horizontality, of the water- 

 laden winds from the sea over the surface of the land ; indeed I am not aware 

 that this subject has ever been considered, although it is an essential element in 

 our problem. If we were thorough^ w^ell informed on the matters about which I 

 have been speaking, we might attempt to calculate the precise difference of climate 

 imder such and such conditions of desert and of forest, and the class of experiences 

 whence our data were derived would themselves furnish tests of the con-ectness of 

 our computations. This will serve as an example of what I consider to be the 



