526 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E. 
shown upon modern maps is due, and it is only a small proportion of the land 
surface of the globe that has, up to the present, been surveyed in a scientific 
manner. 
It is therefore of the greatest importance that the best value possible should 
be obtained from the work done by explorers, and this in the past has not 
always been sufficiently attended to, though during the last few years it is better 
understood. The people who stop at home in comfortable ease do not sufficiently 
realise the difficulties under which the conscientious traveller works and gathers 
together information about the country he passes through. Formerly, he 
generally had to work out his own observations and compile his own maps, but 
now conditions in this respect have greatly improved, and when he brings home 
his observations, notes, and sketches he can hand them over to some body, such 
as the Royal Geographical Society, by whom they will be put in shape in a better 
manner than he could do it for himself. One has heard of an explorer in a little- 
known country sitting up all night after a hard day’s work, working out his 
astronomical observations, and trying to put his rough surveys into shape. He 
would have done better to have gone to sleep and prepared himself by a good 
rest for the next day’s journey. In fact, it would be better if an explorer never 
looked at the figures of an observation after he had recorded them, or read over 
the notes of his past work, confining himself to recording what he has actually 
seen day by day as accurately as circumstances permitted, and carefully dis- 
poses what he really saw from what he thought he had seen, or what he had 
eard. 
It would be easy to adduce instances of the errors which have arisen from 
the neglect of such precautions. Perhaps one of the best known is that I have 
already alluded to, when James Bruce, a careful explorer, because he had made 
up his mind that the Blue Nile was the real Nile, passed the White Nile without 
taking the trouble to examine it, and recorded it as being a comparatively 
insignificant river. Then, there was the case of Sir Samuel Baker, who, having 
reached the shores of the Albert Nyanza with great difficulty, relied too much 
on what he was told by the natives, and showed it on his map as extending many 
miles to the south of the equator. But great responsibility rests also upon those 
who have the task of compiling a map from the notes of an explorer, and the 
greatest care has to be taken to show only what is really known, and not what is 
uncertain. Geographers, whether in the field or in the drawing office, should 
always hold up before themselves a standard of accuracy higher than it is always 
easy to live up to. 
Geography under its more ancient name of geometry is, of course, the mother 
of all sciences, although at the present time geometry has got a more narrow 
meaning, and is perhaps regarded by some as independent of geography, although 
really only a branch of it. The study of the earth upon which they lived was 
to the ancient nations the most important of all studies, and it is interesting to 
trace how astronomy, mathematics, geology, and ethnology are all so interspersed 
with geography that. it is difficult to separate them. It is satisfactory to note 
how from the very first the British Association has always recognised the great 
importance of geography, since the first meeting of the Association at Oxford in 
1832, when Sir Roderick Murchison, so well known to fame, acted as President 
of the Geographical and Geological Section. These two sciences remained united 
in.the same section until the meeting at Edinburgh in 1850, when Sir R. Murchi- 
son was again the President. But, at the next meeting, at Ipswich in 1851, they 
were separated, and while Geology remained as the subject of Section C, 
Geography, on account of its great importance, was made the subject of Section 
E, and the science of ethnology was united with it. Sir R. Murchison was the 
first President of the new Geographical Section, and was afterwards President 
no fewer than six times of Section EK, showing the great importance attached 
by him to the study of the science of Geography.” May I express the hope that 
the Presidents of the Section will endeavour in future to follow, however humbly, 
in the footsteps of that leader of science? 
