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TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 151 



inunicate the results of their labours, and be ready to promote the candid and im- 

 artial consideration of any papers to be read and discussed. With this assurance 

 will throw myself upon your indulgence for any shortcomings, and proceed with 

 tlie business before us. 



The admirable review of geographical progi-ess during the past year presented 

 to the Geographical Society at its last Anniversary in May by Sii* Henry Rawlinson, 

 must be too fresh in the memory of those of my hearers who are interested in geo- 

 gi-aphical pursuits, to require any attempt on my part to go over the same ground. 

 It has been published in the volimie of the Society's Transactions for the year, and 

 it would be superfluous, if not presumptuous, on my part, therefore, to occupy 

 your time by any repetition on the present occasion. 



If I ventui-e at all upon this field of geographical achievements it will be 

 rather with a view to draw your attention to the wide scope and application of 

 Geography as a science, and to the mode in which geographical explorations and 

 discoveries lead to important results in various directions. Geography, in a popular 

 sense, is apt to be too much associated with a mere description of the configui-ation 

 of the earth, with its seas and continents, illustrated by maps. But before 

 Geogi-aphy could fulfil even this very narrow and restricted conception of its 

 proper functions — before, indeed, it could exist in any but the rudest and most im- 

 perfect shape, such as we seejn mediaeval maps — great progress had to be made in 

 astronomy and mathematics. Without these two sister sciences. Cartography, or 

 the process of depicting relative distances and places on the earth, either on maps 

 or globes, could not be carried out with any approach to certainty or accm-acy. 

 Explorations with a compass, and measure of distance estimated by the number 

 of days' journey, gave little more than such results as we find recorded in Pto- 

 lemy's works. The map of the world preserved in Hereford Cathedral is a cmious 

 sample. There the history of our race, as well as the distribution of countries, are 

 given on pm-ely theologic and historical or legendary data. Beginning at the 

 top of the circle with Paradise, it presents nearly every thing in nature and 

 fiction, but Geography, to the gaze of the cmious. Until the discoveiy of the 

 gnomon, and the means of fixing the latitude and longitude of any place by ob- 

 servations of the celestial bodies had been perfected, Geography could have no 

 existence as a science. It owes much, also, to its intimate connexion with various 

 branches of knowledge, and investigations into the nature and mutual relations of 

 objects on the earth, or forming a part of its crust, which seemingly had, at the 

 time of their prosecution, no direct bearing on Geogi'aphy or its objects. In 

 modern times only it has been fully recognized that Descriptive Geography is of 

 little value apart from Physical Geography ; and these, again, lose much of their 

 interest without their relation to Political and Historical events are traced. 



Astronomy had, in efiect, to supply the means of reducing to a systematic and 

 available form the accumulated materials which must now constitute Geography, 

 by first enabling geographers to determine with accuracy the relative position of 

 places, with their distance from each other, and their exact latitude and longitude. 

 But this power once gained, the importance of GeogTaphy and its influence over 

 the material interests of mankind soon became apparent, and its progi-ess as a 

 science has gone on increasing at a proportionately rapid rate. It was in vain 

 that Marco Polo twice traversed Asia in its whole breadth, from the Mediterranean 

 to the Great Wall of China, and lived to return and recount all the wonders he 

 had seen to his countrymen within the prison walls of Genoa. It only earned for 

 him the derisive sobriquet of Marco Millione, from the supposed fabulous nature 

 of the statements he made ; and although he contributed so vast an amount of new 

 facts to the knowledge of the earth's surface, it does not appear, even when his book 

 was printed a centm-y and a half later, that it had any material effect upon the science 

 of Geography, for want of the higher knowledge required to systematize and assi- 

 milate the whole. 



Later (as Colonel Yule has well pointed out in his admirable edition of Marco 

 Polo's book), when Vasco de Gama, doubling the Cape of Good Hope, reached 

 the Malabar coast, and " the great burst of discovery eastward and westward took 

 place," the results of all attempts to combine the new knowledge with the old 

 Tivere most unhappy. The first and crudest forms of such combination attempted 



