332 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF SCIENCE, ETC. 
whose influence still operates in the present, the richer and truer will be his 
teaching of geography. 
Similarly, a further link between history and geography can and should 
be forged by the history teacher. Many of the events of the past find their fullest 
interpretation when studied in their geographical setting ; thus, the greater the 
geographical knowledge of the teacher of history the fuller and truer is his 
history teaching. This, however, does not mean that historical teaching must 
not be begun at all until a later stage than geographical. Important aspects 
of the relations between men in organised societies are so far purely social or 
political as to be intelligible either without any reference at all to the control 
exercised by geographical factors, or at all events without mora precise know- 
ledge of geographical environments than the pupil’s own daily experience can 
supply. For example, in introducing a class to the elements of English 
political history it is not necessary to deal expressly with the climate or 
natural products of the British Isles. On the other hand, the systematic study 
of Mediterranean or Oriental history (including even the study of the Old and 
New Testaments so far as this is specifically historical) should be postponed 
until the pupil has been prepared to appreciate the differences between an 
English town or village on the one hand, and a Greek city-state or Palestinian 
village on the other, which result from their respective geographical 
surroundings. Indeed, from the point at which such mutual reliance begins, of 
the geographer and the historian on materials contributed by the other, it is 
essential that the periods and regions prescribed for special study should stand 
in intelligible relations with one another. There is obvious want of correlation 
if a class is confronted in the same term with the geography of India or China 
and with the history of France or the British oversea Dominions, or with the 
Mediterranean or African geography and the history of the British Isles or of 
Germany. 
The one great difficulty, so far as the pupils are concerned, is that, in relation 
to the particular section of history taken, their geographical background may 
be inadequate for the full appreciation of the teacher’s geographical references, 
and vice versa for the study of geography. 
In so far as historical allusions are introduced into geographical teaching, 
or geographical allusions into historical, they should be such as either are 
intelligible without explanatory digression, or are supplementary to the subject- 
matter of the other course, and not a partial repetition of it. As example of 
this last type of correlation, the geographical position of cities or distribution 
of products or industries should be illustrated as far as possible from places in 
the region of which the political history can be presumed to be most familiar 
to the class, but the social and economic conditions of which have had to be 
treated more summarily in the history lesson. 
The most satisfactory solution is that as far as possible the schemes of 
history and geography should be so co-ordinated as to allow the two studies to 
enrich each other. The local study is essentially one in which geography and 
history combine with each other and with the sciences. It is possible, however, 
to take more or less simultanecnsly such studies as British history and the 
geography of the British Isles: colonia] history and the geography of the British 
Empire; European history and the geography of Europe; classical and biblical 
history and the geography of the Mediterranean lands. 
The Committee has had before it one scheme at present in use in which the 
history of geographical discovery is the basis of the geography course. There 
the regional study of the world follows in its treatment the discovery, explora- 
tion, and development of the world, beginning with the lands of Egypt, Meso- 
potamia, and the Mediterranean, and finishing with the highly industrial lands 
of the North Atlantic with their world market and almost world control. The 
proper use of travellers’ narratives is to illustrate by example the habit of mind 
by which experienced observers attack unfamiliar material. And examining 
even the barest nucleus of geographical and historical knowledge, the same atti- 
tude of mind (mutatis mutandis) may be induced in elementary pupils by using 
incidents from the history of geographical discovery as illustrations, and a short 
survey of this department of history may even be admitted, if time allows, as 
3 See Appendix IT. 
Peet 
