TRANSACXIONS OF SECTION E. 727 



Section E.— GEOGRAPHY. 



President of the Section — Sir J. D. Hooker, K.C.S.L, C.B., M.D., D.C.L., 

 LL.D., P.K.S., V.P.L.S., F.G.S., F.R.G.S. 



THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 1. 



The President delivered the following Address : — 



On Geograjjhical Distribution. 



It has been suggested that a leading feature of the sectional addresses to be 

 delivered on the occasion of this, the fiftieth anniversary of the meetings of the 

 British Association, should be a review of the progress made during the last half- 

 century in the branches of knowledge which the Sections respectively represent. 



It has further been arranged that, at so auspicious an epoch, the Sections should, 

 when possible, be presided over by past Presidents of the Association. This has 

 resulted in almost every sectional chair being occupied by a President eminent as a 

 cultivator of the science with which his Section will be engaged, though not the 

 one I have the honour of filling, which, from the fact of there being no professed 

 geographer amongst the surviving past Presidents, has been confided to an amateur. 



Under these circumstances I should be untrue to myself and to you, if I pre- 

 sumed to address you as one conversant with geography in any extended significa- 

 tion of the word, or if I attempted to deal with that important and attractive 

 branch of it, topographical discovery, which claims more or less exclusively the 

 time and attention of the geographers of this country. It is more fitting for me, 

 and more in keeping with the objects of this Association, that I be allowed to 

 discourse before you on one of the many branches of science the pursuit of which 

 is involved in the higher aims of geographers, and which, as we are informed by 

 an accomplished cultivator of the science, are integral portions of scientific geo- 

 gi-aphy.' Of these none is more important than that of the distribution of animals 

 and plants, which further recommends itself to you on this occasion from being a 

 subject that owes its great progress during the last half-century as much to the 

 theories advanced by celebrated voyagers and travellers as to their observations 

 and collections. 



Before, however, I proceed to off'er you a sketch of the progress made during 

 the lifetime of the Association in this one branch, I must digress to remind you, 

 however briefly, of the even greater advances made in others, in many cases 

 through the direct or indirect instrumentality of the Association itself, acting in 

 concert with the Royal and with the Royal Geographical Societies. 



In topography the knowledge obtained during this half-century has been impre- 

 cedentedly great. The veil has been withdrawn from the sources of the Nile, and the 

 lake systems of Central Africa have been approximately localised and outlined. Aus- 

 tralia, never previously traversed, has been crossed and recrossed in various direc- 

 tions. New Guinea has had its coasts surveyed, and its previously utterly unknown 

 interior has been here and there visited. The topography of Western China and 



' Major-General Strachey, in a lecture delivered before the Royal Geographical 

 Society {Procecdiiif/s, vol. xxxi. p. 179, 1877) discusses with just appreciation and 

 admirable cleai'ness, the interdependence of the sciences which enter into the study 

 and aims of scientific geogi'aphy, and wliich he enumerates under fourteen heads. 

 This lecture contains the ablest review of the subject known to me. It might very 

 well be entitled ' The whole duty of the Geographer.' Every traveller's outfit should 

 inchide a copy of it, and one should accompany every prize given by the Geogra- 

 phical Society to students for proficiency in geographical knowledge. 



