SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS.— E. 347 



ment and labour supply leads to consideration of significance of conditions of land- 

 tenure and land-subdivision. The problem seen to rest upon (i) basic physical condi- 

 tions, (ii) basic social concepts and ideals, (iii) stage of economic and political growth. 

 Some recent statements and criticisms reviewed (e.g. Report of Queensland Land 

 Administration Board ; British Economic Mission) and the bearing of present 

 tendencies in Australia estimated. 



Friday, July 26. 



Prof. H. J. Fleure. — European Cities. 



Cultivation of wheat and barley, originating in S.W. Asia and N.E. Africa, was 

 attended by many inventions, making life more settled, so that the village grew and 

 a considerable development of religious ideas and of material exchanges followed, and 

 centres of expression of these activities became cities. These ideas spread piecemeal 

 to Europe both via the Mediterranean and through the lands around the Black Sea 

 to the loess-regions of Central Europe. The latter spread appears to have been more 

 fractional, and the village remained the typical form of social expression until the 

 Middle Ages were approaching. In the former case the city, with its attendant 

 religious and commercial organisation, appeared probably before 2500 B.C., as at 

 Hissarlik and Knossos. There is thus a difference of some 3,000 years in the date 

 of the birth of cities in the two regions. 



The Europe of the City Civilisation, i.e. the Mediterranean Basin, falls naturally 

 into eastern and western regions, the city being of much later date (Rome, tradition- 

 ally, 753 B.C.) in the western one. 



Roman organisation of communications spread the idea of the Roman quadrate 

 city north-west and north of the Alps, but sometimes the city grew from a village, 

 apparently just a heap of houses (Haufendorf) or a row along a road (Strassendorf), 

 or from a hill-brow fortress in its ring rampart, perhaps also from encampments of 

 wheeled nomads. 



The quadrated town of Gaul or the Rhine usually became a bishop's city after the 

 Roman Empire broke down, and a cathedral was often the synthetic expression of 

 social life, and was thus in a dominant position, and the bishop's town often survived 

 the period of impoverishment that followed the spread of Islam across the old 

 Mediterranean trade routes. The town of the centre of the Paris Basin does not 

 typically make so much of either castle or town hall or guildhalls, as of the cathedral. 



With regrowth of trade after the period of impoverishment the commercial city 

 was born and attained its clearest development in Flanders and N. Germany. Its 

 roads leading to a harbour, its town hall on a central square, and guildhalls near by, 

 its civic belfry and civic church are outstanding features, growing side by side, it may 

 be, with a castle and a bishop's church. 



There is interpenetration of these ideas and those of the Paris Basin along the 

 northern borders of the latter. 



There are also cases of cities growing around castles, a few in France, more east 

 of the Rhine, where also the idea of the bishop's city is transplanted, and the idea 

 of the merchant city has spread. 



Further east the city is often either a transplantation of an idea from the west, or 

 a growth under the influence of aristocratic and military churchmen or traders, and 

 a cathedral in a castle enceinte may be the nucleus, sometimes as at Prag , standing 

 out in contrast to the burghers' city. The castle-and-cathedral-nucleus is expressed 

 most intensely in the Russian cities' Kremlins. 



The regions where the castle-and-cathedral-nucleus occurs are the regions in 

 •which racial or cultural minorities create very sharp political problems, those in 

 which bishops' cities with a Roman background occur include the regions of historic 

 national organisation. 



Cities definitely planned, usually in quadrates, have been founded at various 

 times throughout the period of city development in most regions of Europe. 



Dr. Vaughan Cornish. — The Rural Scenery of England and Wales. 



There are many types of beautiful scenery, but all have one common character, 

 harmonious grouping. Given this condition the landscape is pictorial, but the intro- 

 duction of an inharmonious element breaks up the picture. 



