TKANSACTIOXS OF SECTION E. 711 



that remain, lying far away from any otlier land, to ilie suutli-east of the 

 Reelings. 



What islands are to the ocean, lakes are to the land. It is only recently that 

 these interesting geographical features have received the attention they deserve. 

 Dr. Murray has for some time been engaged in investigating the physical con- 

 ditions of some of the remarkable lakes in the West of Scotland. Some three 

 years ago my friend and colleague Dr. Mill carried out a very careful survey of the 

 English lakes, under the auspices of the Royal Geographical Society. His sound- 

 ings, his observatious of the lake conditions, of the features on the margins of and 

 around the lakes, when combined with the investigati<in of the r(5gime of the rivers 

 and the physical geography of the surrounding country, conducted by such accom- 

 plished geologists as INIr. Marr, afford the materials for an extremely interesting 

 study in the geographical history of the district. On the Continent, again, men 

 like Professor Penck, of A'ienna, have been giving special attention to lakes, that 

 accomplished geographer's monograph on Lake Constance, based on the work of 

 the five States bordering its .shores, being a model -work of its kind. But the 

 father of Limnology, as this branch of geography is called, is undoubtedly Pro- 

 fessor Forel, of Geneva, who for many years has been investigating the conditions 

 of that classical lake, and who is now publishing the results of his research. Dr. 

 Forel's paper on ' Limnology : a Branch of Geography,' and the discussion which 

 follows in the Eeport of the last International Geographical Congress, affords a 

 very fair idea in short space of the kind of work to be done by this branch of the 

 science. In France, again, M. Delebecque is devoting himself to a similar line 

 of research ; in Germany tile, Halbfass, and others ; Eichter in Austria, and the 

 Balaton Commission in Hungary. I may also here refer appropriately to Mr. 

 Israel C. Russell's able work, published in Boston in 1895, on 'The Lakes of 

 North America,' in which the author uses these lakes as a text for a discourse on 

 the origin of lake basins and the part played by lakes in the changes studied by 

 dynamic geolog}-. One of the best examples of an exhaustive study of a lake basin 

 will be found in the magnificent monograph on Lake Bonneville, by Mr. G. K. 

 Gilbert, and that on Lake Lahontan by Mr. Israel Cook Russell, published by the 

 United States Geological Survey ; the former is indeed a complete history of the 

 great basin, the largest of the interior drainage areas of the North American 

 continent. In the publications of the various Surveys of the United States as 

 well as in the official reports of the Canadian Lake Surveys, a vast amount of 

 material exists for any one interested in the study of lakes; in addition, the 

 elaborate special Reports on the great lakes by the Hydrographic Department. 

 Indeed, North America presents an exceptionally favourable field for limnological 

 investigation ; if carried out on a systematic method the results could not but be 

 of great scientific interest. 



Rivers are of not less geographical interest than lakes, and these have also 

 recently been the subject of special investigation by physical geographers. I have 

 already referred to Professor Davis's study of a special English river system. The 

 work in the English Lake District by Mr. Marr, spoken of in connection with 

 Dr. Mill's investigations, was mainly on the hydrology of the region. Both in 

 Germany and in Russia special attention is being given to this subject, while in 

 America there is an enormous literature on the Mississippi alone, mainly, no doubt, 

 from the practical standpoint, while the result of much valuable work on the 

 St. Lawrence is buried in Canadian official publications. 



But time does not admit of my going farther. I might have pointed out the 

 wide and vastly interesting field presented by what the Germans call Anthropo- 

 geography, dealing with the interrelations between humanity and its geographical 

 environment. Geography, Mr. Mackinder has said, is the physical basis of history; 

 it is, indeed, the physical basis of all human activity, and from that standpoint 

 the field for geographical research is unbounded. But I can only hint at this. I 

 have endeavoured to indicate what are some of the leading geographical problems 

 of the future, first in order to show at this somewhat critical epoch how very 

 much yet remains to be done, how many important lines of inquiry are open to the 



