88 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
this policy were realised in instructional practice by encouragement or 
compulsion of secondary students to undergo courses of Geography 
proper, with a view to promotion subsequently to classes in Historical 
Geography (i.e., if History be treated geographically by application of 
another science previously studied), it would be sound. But I gather 
from Sir Halford Mackinder’s recent report that such is not the 
practice. Courses in Geography proper are not encouraged during the 
secondary period of education at all. Hncouragement ceases with the 
primary period, at an age before which only the most elementary 
instruction in such a science can be assimilated—when, indeed, not much 
more can be expected of pupils than the memorising of those summary 
diagrammatic expressions of geographical results, which are maps. How 
these results have been arrived at, what sort of causes account for 
physical Distribution, how multifarious are its facts and features which 
maps cannot express even on the minutest scale—these things must 
be instilled into minds more robust than those of children under fourteen ; 
and until some adequate idea of them has been imbibed it is little use 
to teach History geographically. So, at least, this matter seems to me. 
It will be patent enough by now that I am maintaining Geography 
proper to be the study of the spatial Distribution of all physical features 
on the surface of this Earth. My view is, of course, neither novel 
nor rare. Almost all who of late years have discussed the scope of 
Geography have agreed that Distribution is of its essence. Among 
the most recent exponents of that view have been two Directors of 
the Oxford School, Sir Halford Mackinder and Professor Herbertson. 
When, however, I add that the study of Distribution, rightly under- 
stood, is the whole essential function of Geography, I part company 
from the theory of some of my predecessors and contemporaries, and 
the practice of more. But our divergence will be found to be not 
serious; for not only do I mean a great deal by the study of Distri- 
bution—quite enough for the function of any one science !—but I claim 
for Geography to the exclusion of any other science all study of spatial 
Distribution on the Earth’s surface. This study has been its well 
recognised function ever since a science of that name has come to be 
restricted to the features of the terrestrial surface—that is, ever since 
‘Geography ’ in the eighteenth century had to abandon to its child Geo- 
logy the study of what lies below that surface even as earlier it had 
abandoned the study of the firmament to an elder child, Astronomy. 
Though Geography has borne other children since, who have grown 
to independent scientific life, none of these has robbed her of that one 
immemorial function. On the contrary, they call upon her to exercise 
it still on their behalf. 
Let no one suppose that I mean by this study and this function 
merely what Professor Herbertson so indignantly repudiated for an 
adequate content of his Science—Physiography plus descriptive Topo- 
graphy. Geography includes these things, of course, but she embraces 
also all investigation both of the actual Distribution of the Earth’s super- 
ficial features and of the causes of the Distribution, the last a profound 
and intricate subject towards the solution of which she has to summon 
assistance from many other sciences and studies. She includes, further, 
