TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E. ' 741 



All tbat was done before his time was mere digging for the foundations ; yet with 

 rare thoroughness he enunciated, at one efVovt, the final theory, detecting the cause 

 both of the movement equatorwards and of the westward swerving. We can 

 point to no such crucial utterance in the i-ister field of oceanography, tliough it is 

 said that, about the time of the American lievolutiou, Benjamin Franklin suggested 

 that wind-pressure was the cause of the surface-currents of the sea. His idea was 

 contained in a memoir on the Gulf Stream, which was suppressed by him lest it 

 should fall into the hands of the English, and be of use to tlieir ships in crossing 

 the Atlantic. Major Rennell also, who, by his map of India and his Herodoteau 

 identifications, presents a likeness to the bfst of the old school of geographers, 

 showed his participation in the new by compiling an Atlantic current-chart. But 

 Humboldt's invention of isotherms in 1817 first gave to climatology cartographic 

 resources, and rendered easy and precise the correlation of climate with relief. 

 The idea was soon applied in other departments of geogra])' v — to the expression 

 of atmospheric pressure, of the temperature of the sea-s.' face, of density of 

 population, and indeed to any similar marses of data, capaLiC, so far as time is 

 concerned, of reduction to averages, but varying locally. The last edition of 

 Berghaus's Physical Atlas is, in this matter, a monument to the memory of 

 Humboldt; j-et it is strange that a method first suggested, in the seventeenth 

 century, by the magnetic lines of the Englishman Flalley, should have been left to 

 fructify in tlie mind of a German of the nineteenth century- 



The facts of geography are obviously capable of two kinds of treatment. The 

 chapter-headings may be such as ' Rivers,' ' Mountains,' ' Cities,' or such as 

 •' Ireland,' ' Italy,' ' Australia.' In other words, we may consider the phenomena 

 of a given type in all parts of the globe, or we may discuss in a given part of the 

 globe the phenomena of all types. In the former case, our book should as a whole 

 observe the order of what has been called the geographical argument ; in the 

 latter case each chapter, the discussion of each country, should exhibit that order 

 comjjlete. For historical reasons, which will be referred to later, we English have 

 fallen into a bad habit of describing the former treatment as ' physical geography,' 

 and the latter as 'geography.' The Germans are more reasonable when they con- 

 trast AUfjemeine Erdkimde with Landerkunde, but Chorography, our nearest English 

 equivalent to Liinderlumde, is a clumsy expression. An alternative would be to 

 speak of ' special geography,' thereby implying a correlative to ' general geography,' 

 which is a })reci»e rendering of Allyemeine Erdkunde. By whatever name we call it, 

 however, it is clear that the treatment by regions is a more thorough test of the 

 logic of the geographical argument than is the treatment by types of phenomena. 

 Hence Humboldt's Essai politique sur la Nouvelle-Espctfjne, published in 1809, 

 must take high rank among' the efforts of the new geography as the first complete 

 descriptioQ of a laiid with the aid of the modern methods. Here, for the first time, 

 we have an exhaustive attempt to relate causally relief, climate, vegetation, fauna, 

 and the various human activities. 



The services of Humboldt to our science were so great that he almost merits 

 the title of a new founder, and yet, of late, it has been the custom to decry him. 

 It is probable that his memory has suffered a little from the less original work of 

 his old ago, for the Humboldt who devised cross-sections and isotherms, and wrote 

 the Essai politique, was divided by the distance of a whole generation from him 

 who was responsible for the Adeyi and the Kosmos. 



We come now to the central event in the history of modern geography. It 

 was in 1 he year 18:10 that Karl Ritter was called to Berlin to act in the double 

 capacity of Professor in the Military School and Professor Extraordinary in the 

 University. Born in 1779, ten years after Humboldt, Ritter's early training 

 and circumstances were such as admirably to fit him for the great position 

 he was to occupy during the last thirty-nine years of his life. Ilis schooling 

 was at Schnepfenthal, under Salzmann, a well-known educational experimenter 

 of the following of Rousseau. Later in life Ritter learnt to know and to love the 

 classics, but Salzmaun's hostility to them as an educational implement secured for 

 his pupil freedom from the current intellectual moulding. The peculiar opportuni- 

 ties of his subsequent position as tutor in the Hollweg family almost amounted to 



