TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E. 729 



ment of the venerable theory that mountain chains are sudden up-thrusts. With- 

 in the same period, the theory of the great oceans having occupied their present 

 positions on the globe from very early geological times was first propounded by 

 Dana,^ the companion of Wilkes in his expedition round the world, and is supported 

 by Darwin and by Wallace. 



In Meteorology the advance is no less attributable to the labours of voyagers 

 and travellers. The establishment of the Meteorological office is due to the 

 energy and perseverance of a great navigator, the late Admiral Fitzroy. 



Another domain of knowledge that claims the strongest sympathies of the 

 geographer is Anthropology. It is only within the last quarter of a century that 

 the study of man imder his physical aspect has been recognised as a distinct branch 

 of science, and represented by a flourishing society, and by annual international 

 congresses. 



I must not conclude this notice without a passing tribute to a department of 

 Geography that has occupied the attention of too few of its cultivators. I mean 

 that of literary research. Nevertheless, in this too the progress has been great ; 

 and I need only mention the publications of the Hakluyt Society, and two works 

 of prodigious learning and the greatest value, 'The Book of Marco Polo, the 

 Venetian,'^ and 'A History' of Ancient Geography,' ^ to prove to you that one 

 need not to travel to new lands to be a profound and sagacious geographer. 



I have asked you to accept the geographical distribution of organic beings as 

 the subject which I have chosen for this address. It is the branch with which 

 I am most familiar ; it illustrates extremely well the interdependence of those 

 sciences which the geographer should study, and as I have before observed, its- 

 progress has been in the main due to the labours of voyagers and travellers. 



In the science of distribution, Botany took the lead. Humboldt, in one of his 

 essays,* says that the germ of it is to be found in an idea of Tournefort, developed 

 by Linnaeus. Tournefort was a Frenchman of great learning, and, moreover, a 

 great traveller. He was sent by the King of France in 1700 to explore the islands 

 of Greece and mountains of Armenia, in the interests of the Jardin des Plantes, 

 and his published narrative is full of valuable matter on the people, antiquities, 

 and natural productions of the countries he visited. The idea attributed to him 

 by Humboldt ^ is, that in ascending mountains we meet successively with vegeta- 

 tions that represent those of successively higher latitudes ; upon which Humboldt 

 observes : ' II ne fallut pas une grande sagacite pour observer que sur les peutes des 

 hautes montagnes de I'Armenie, des vegetaux des differentes latitudes se auivent 

 comme lea climats supei-poses I'un sur les autres;' but he goes on to remark, 

 * cette idee de Tournefort developpee par Linne dans deux dissertations int^ressantes 

 (Stationes et Colonife Plantarum), renferment cependant le germe de la Geographie 

 Botanique.' Tournefort's idea was, however, an advanced one for the age he 

 lived in, and should not be judged by the light of the knowledge of a succeeding 

 century. He had no experience of other latitudes than the few intervening 

 between Paris and the Levant. Humboldt himself did not suspect the whole 

 bearing of the idea on the principles of geographical distribution, and that the 

 parallelism between the floras of mountains and of latitudes was the result of 

 community of descent of the plants composing the floras, nor that it was brought 

 about by physical causes. The idea of the early part of the eighteenth century is, 

 when rightly understood, found to be the forerunner of the matured knowledge of 

 the middle of the nineteenth. 



The labours of Linnaeus, himself a traveller, whose narratives give him 



' Dana in American Journal of Science, Ser. 2, Vol. iii. p. 352 (1847), and various 

 later publications. 



- By Colonel Henry Yule, C.B. (ed. 1, 1871 ; ed. 2, 1875\ 



3 By S. H. Bunbury (1879). 



■* ' Sur les lois que Ton observe dans le distribution des formes v6g4tales ' {Mcmoire- 

 lua I'Institut de France, Januan- 29, 1816). 



'- I have been unable to find any such idea expressed in Tournefort's works. 

 Edward Forbes, however, also attributes the idea to Tournefort {Mewoirs of tlie- 

 Geological Survey, vol. i. p. 351). 



