424 bepoet — 1879. 



interesting by the ancient records of his people. But geography is an applied 

 science. This body of facts and their causes is not a subject for mere speculative 

 study only. It is of practical utility ; for the knowledge of the way in which 

 Nature has worked in past ages discloses her present and future operations, 

 and enables the enlightened administrator and engineer to work in harmony 

 with them. 



Again, to pass to another part of the world. The student of history reads of 

 the great sea fight which King Edward III. fought with the French off Sluys ; 

 how, in those days, the merchant vessels came up to the walls of that flourishing 

 seaport by every tide ; and how a century later a Portuguese fleet conveyed Isabella 

 from Lisbon, and an English fleet brought Margaret of York from the Thames, to 

 marry successive Dukes of Burgundy at the port of Sluys. In our own time if a 

 modern traveller drives twelve miles out of Bruges across the Dutch frontier he 

 will find a small agricultural town surrounded by corn fields and meadows, and 

 clumps of trees, whence the sea is not in sight from the top of the town-hall steeple. 

 This is Sluys. A physical geographer will seek out the causes which have brought 

 about this surprising change. They are most interesting, and most conducive to 

 an intelligent comprehension of his science, and he will find them recorded in 

 history. Thus the historian and the geographer work hand in hand, each aiding 

 and furthering the researches of the other. 



Once more. We turn to the great Baie du Mont Saint Michel, between 

 Normandy and Brittany. In Roman authors we read of the vast forest called 

 ' Setiacum nemus,' in the centre of which an isolated rock arose, surmounted by a 

 temple of Jupiter, once a college of Druidesses. Now the same rock, with its 

 glorious pile dedicated to St. Michael, is surrounded by the sea at high tides. The 

 story of this transformation is even more striking than that of Sluys ; and its 

 adequate narration justly earned for M. Manet the gold medal of the French 

 Geographical Society in 1828. 



Once again let us turn for a moment to the Mediterranean shores of Spain, and 

 the mountains of Murcia. Those rocky heights, whose peaks stand out against 

 the deep blue sky, hardly support a blade of vegetation. The algarobas and olives 

 at their bases are artificially supplied with soil. It is scarcely credible that these 

 are the same mountains which, according to the forest book of King Alfonso el 

 Sabio, were once clothed to their summits with pines and other forest trees ; while 

 soft clouds and mist hung over a rounded shaggy outline of wood, where now 

 the naked rocks make a hard line against the burnished sky. But Arab and Spanish 

 chroniclers alike record the facts, and geographical science explains the cause. 



There is scarcely a district in the whole range of the civilised world where 

 some equally interesting geographical story has not been recorded, and where the 

 same valuable lessons may not be taught. This is comparative geography. 



The peasant of Bengal sees the mould falling into his turbid river, and learns 

 the first lesson of a course which teaches him the history of the formation of the 

 mighty basin of the Ganges. So should we, in England, to use the words of 

 Professor Huxley, ' seek the meanings of the phenomena offered by the brook which 

 runs through our village, or of the gravel pit whence our roads are mended.' 

 Their meaning is equally significant, equally instructive, and it is thus that we 

 should all begin to learn geography. 



Here, in this valley of the Don, as elsewhere throughout England and the wide 

 world, the lessons of geography are open for you to learn. I intend, with the 

 permission of the Section, to conclude this address by referring to the physical 

 geography of the basin of the river Don, not presuming to teach the natives those 

 natural features which they must needs know far better than I, but endeavouring 

 to point out how each feature has its lesson to teach, which bears on questions 

 relating to distant lands, and how a man may become a sound practical geographer 

 without going more than twenty miles from his own door. In this way I would 

 urge all my countrymen whose destiny is not to travel far afield, by studying the 

 geography of their own native district, to acquire a comprehensive grounding which 

 will fit them to discuss more general geographical questions relating to broader 

 problems and more distant regions. 



