536 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION FE, 
Section .—GEOGRAPHY. 
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION.—PRoFEssor H. N. Dickson, D.Sc. 
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 11. 
The President delivered the following Address :— 
Stycz the last meeting of this Section the tragic fate of Captain Scott’s party, 
after its successful journey to the South Pole, has become known; and our hopes 
of welcoming a great leader, after great achievement, have been disappointed. 
There is no need to repeat here the narrative of events, or to dwell upon the 
lessons afforded by the skill, and resource, and heroic persistence, which endured 
to the end. All these have been, or will be, placed upon permanent record. 
But it is right that we should add our word of appreciation, and proffer our 
sympathy to those who have suffered loss. It is for us also to take note that 
this latest of the great Antarctic expeditions has not merely reached the Pole, as 
another has done, but has added, to an extent that few successful exploratory 
undertakings have ever been able to do, to the sum of scientific geographical 
knowledge. As the materials secured are worked out it will, I believe, become 
more and more apparent that few of the physical and biological sciences have not 
received contributions, and important contributions, of new facts; and also that 
problems concerning the distribution of the different groups of phenomena and 
their action and reaction upon one another—the problems which are specially 
within the domain of the geographer—have not merely been extended in their 
scope but have been helped to their solution. 
The reaching of the two Poles of the earth brings to a close a long and 
brilliant chapter in the story of geographical exploration. There is still before 
us a vista of arduous research in geography, bewildering almost in its extent, in 
such a degree indeed that ‘the scope of geography’ is in itself a subject of 
perennial interest. But the days of great pioneer discoveries in topography are 
definitely drawn to their close. We know the size and shape of the earth, at 
least to a first approximation, and as the map fills up we know that there can be 
no new continents and no new oceans to discover, although all are still, in a 
sense, to conquer. Looking back, we find that the qualities of human enterprise 
and endurance have shown no change; we need no list of names to prove that 
they were alike in the days of the earliest explorations, of the discovery of the 
New World or of the sea route to India, of the ‘ Principall Navigations,’ or of 
this final attainment of the Poles. The love of adventure and the gifts of 
courage and endurance have remained the same : the order of discovery has been 
determined rather by the play of imagination upon accumulated knowledge, 
suggesting new methods and developing appropriate inventions. Men have 
dared to do risky things with inadequate appliances, and in doing so have shown 
how the appliances may be improved and how new enterprises may become pos- 
sible as well as old ones easier and safer. As we come to the end of these ‘ great 
explorations,’ and are restricted more and more to investigations of a less 
striking sort, it is well to remember that in geography, as in all other sciences, 
