SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS.— E. 355 



the fabric of knowledge in these subjects. It has not, however, been so generally 

 recognised in practice, that such subjects have also a geographical aspect of similar 

 educational value ; being concerned as they are, with the distribution of certain physical 

 facts and forces — from light and heat to organic life — and consequently of the natural 

 objects wherein they are manifested to us. Still less, till recently, has it been realised 

 that not only the races of mankind, but every manifestation of human desire and will 

 has likewise its geographical distribution ; it can be ' mapped ' and compared with 

 other mappings ; and the ' reading ' of such maps is as essential to a liberal education 

 as the reading of foreign languages or mathematical symbols. Geography, then, like 

 history, is not so much one of the departments of science, as a mode of interpretation, 

 criticism, and application, available in all departmental sciences, and chiefly concerned 

 with the regional correlation of the facts and processes with which they severally 

 deal both in theory and in practical life. It would seem to follow that geographical 

 presentation, like historical narrative, can hardly be introduced too early in the process 

 of education ; and it certainly never is outgrown. Every child inevitably is becoming 

 some sort of a geographer, as he is becoming some sort of a historian, in "respect of his 

 own explorations and memories ; the only question for the teacher is, how to make 

 as good a geographer and historian as natural ability allows. The starting-point is in 

 the child's immediate unavoidable surroundings, his home, school, and district, in all 

 their weajth of illustration both of the ' way things happen ' and the ' way people 

 behave,' which are the raw material of history and geography throughout. Map- 

 making, the necessary preparation for map-reading, provides the framework for the 

 record and display of every kind of wayside observation — ' every-way ' knowledge, 

 it may be called— as the calendar and diary correlate the memories of ' every day.' 

 Here, from the first, too, geographical training joins forces with literary, in the 

 appreciation of fehcitous and intimate description of natural objects and occurrences ; 

 as literature joins with history in the felicitous commemoration of events and personali- 

 ties. And other arts — in particular the greater schools of landscape and genre paintinw 

 — contribute similarly to geographical interpretation, as portrait painting, and the 

 portrayal of occasions and manners, to historical. 



But geographical teaching, of the kind here projected, presumes geographical 

 thinking, and some geographical training in the teacher. For the teaching of history, 

 the corresponding contention is undisputed; still more so, for the teaching of languages 

 or branches of science ; and of this the moral is that geography is no longer a ' school 

 subject ' merely, but as worthy as history or literature of recognition at the University 

 stage. 



Discussion : Prof. P. M. Roxby, Mr. G. Fletcher. 



JOHANNESBURG. 



Wednesday, July 31. 



Prof. J. H. Welungton. —Physical Influences in the Human Geography 

 of South Africa. 



Mr. A. G. Ogilvie. — Report of Committee on the Geography of Tropical 

 Africa. 



Miss M. R. SuACKLETON. —Continentality of Climate in Relation to Human 

 Geography in Europe. 



An examination will be made of the usefulness to geographers of the climatologists' 

 views on continentality in regard to Europe. 



Viewed from a world standpoint and in regard to the general effect on human 

 modes of life, the ' continental ' climate of e.g. the Moscow region seems to differ 

 more from the ' continental ' climate of e.g. the Kirghiz steppe than it does from the 

 ' oceanic ' climate of e.g. the British Isles. There seems a fundamental difference to 

 the geographer between areas of continental climate with sufficient rain for agriculture 

 and close settlement, and those with so little rain that, at best, only a nomadic popula- 

 tion can be supported. From the world viewpoint, almost the whole of Europe is 



AA 2 



