TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E. 425 



Your own poet had all the instincts of a true geographer : he who sang, of 

 your — 



Five rivers, like the fingers of a hand, 



Flung from black mountains, mingle, and are one 



Where sweetest valleys quit the wild and grand 



And eldest forests o'er the sylvan Don, 



Bid their immortal brother journey on, 



A stately pilgrim, watched by all the hills. 



In the region watered by that river there are doubtless many others whose 

 unspoken thoughts often echo the words of the Sheffield poet, and to whom I 

 would fain speak of the valley of the Don and its geographical features. 



Afterwards the Section will be occupied with several important papers teaching 

 us lessons, and telling us most valuable stories relating to other and more distant 

 parts of the world. In the few remarks I have now addressed to the Section, I 

 have endeavoured to introduce the subjects of those papers, hy touching upon the 

 position of geography as a science, and on the numerous practical uses to which 

 our various results can be applied. These uses "will appear in their concrete form in 

 the papers which will occupy us during the present and ensuing meetings. 



PART II. 



THE VALLEY OP THE DON. 



In discussing the geography of the valley of the Don, the river basin in which 

 Sheffield is situated, I am anxious again to assure the local members of this Section 

 that I do not presume to give lessons to them respecting their own country. My 

 objects are rather to point out the ready means of acquiring geographical knowledge 

 at their own doors, and to explain the connection between geography and other 

 sciences, especially geology, by making use of the illustrations furnished by a 

 special region. 



I shall endeavour to show you, although geography requires the aid of other 

 sciences — of geology in explaining the physical phenomena on the earth's surface ; 

 of ethnology, in treating of the effects of climate and other physical conditions on 

 the races of men ; of botany and zoology in studying the distribution of plants 

 and animals; of meteorology ; and of history in telling us of the changes that have 

 been progressing in former ages — that nevertheless our science forms a distinct 

 body of knowledge, with its own objects, and its own methods of research. 



The river basin of the Don, the region of which Sheffield is the capital, 

 occupies an area of 600 square miles, and is about 40 miles in length by 15 to 20 

 miles wide. It extends from the central water-parting of England eastward to the 

 tidal waters of the Ouse; and from the sea level to the highest peaks on the 

 water-parting there is a rise of nearly 2,000 feet. At the first glance over this 

 region we see at once how diversified are the physical features it presents, from 

 craggy heights round the sources of the Don to the levels of Hatfield Chase and 

 Tborne Waste. This diversity assists an inhabitant to study, round his own home, 

 many of the geographical problems which he reads or hears of in connection with 

 ■distant regions, where nature has worked on a grander or more extended scale. 

 Instead of confining himself to the study of books, he may go to the book of nature 

 which is open before him, and to which he will return with ever-increasing delight 

 and interest. For almost every geographical point that he meets with in the 

 course of study will be found illustrated in the physical features of his native 

 river-basin ; and if the chances of life lead to his becoming a traveller in distant 

 lands, he can have had no better training than a study of the valley of the Don 

 affords. 



A range of mountains containing the sources of the Don extends for some 

 twenty miles, and forms the western rim of the river basin. To the north is 

 Ramsden Clough, where the Don and Calder take their rise, and near here the Holme 

 Moss attains a height of 1,860 feet. The country ia diversified by high hills of 



