E.— GEOGRAPHY. 99 



physical element. His unit is the place or region. It is this concept — 

 and I do not think it can be emphasised too strongly — which gives dis- 

 tinctiveness and individuality to his work. With the relationship of 

 climate and other physical factors to race in a region, the geographer is 

 closely concerned, and there are few more important aspects of his study 

 than the composition, actual or potential, of the societies occupying the 

 region. In the world of to-day there are many regions of ' closed ' human 

 associations, if I may borrow a useful term from plant geography, regions 

 such as China or the Mediterranean lands as a whole, where the dominant 

 racial type or types in possession are so numerous and well adjusted that 

 the entry of any important new racial element is extremely unlikely. But 

 there are other regions of ' open ' human associations, at present thinly 

 peopled but capable of holding a much larger population, whose racial 

 future is uncertain. Such, for example, are Tropical Australia and 

 parts of Malaysia, of Africa, even of Asia. Is it possible or desirable for 

 the geographer in his study of these regions to confine himself to their 

 resources and economic possibilities and not to consider at all, in the 

 light of all that he can learn from anthropology, the relative aptitudes 

 and adaptability, climatic and otherwise, of various racial groups for 

 developing them, and the extent and manner in which co-operation 

 between different groups may in certain cases be secured for this end ? 



Take, for example, the highly important pronouncement made by 

 General Smuts last autumn in one of his Rhodes' lectures at Oxford. In 

 the course of his plea for the advance of native Africa through the 

 introduction of a higher civilisation in the form of White settlement, he 

 advocated ' a strong forward movement in the policy of settling the high- 

 lands of Eastern Africa which stretch in an unbroken belt, hundreds of 

 miles broad, from Kenya to South Africa.' It is not for me to express 

 an a friori opinion on the wisdom of tliis suggestion, but it raises vitally 

 important issues of human geography which certainly ought to be faced 

 before such a programme is really adopted. These issues are at once 

 racial and economic in character. Do we yet know enough about the 

 effects of a high plateau climate in equatorial latitudes on peoples of 

 North European stock ? Even if it be granted that satisfactory acclimatis- 

 ation of such peoples in the Kenya Highlands can be achieved, are the 

 conditions of the plateau belt as a whole intervening between them and 

 ' temperate ' South Africa sufficiently similar to warrant the prospects of 

 an equally good adjustment % The tentative generalisation has been made 

 that, from the standpoint of the success of ' White ' plantations, there is 

 a vital difference between the 4,500/6,000 feet altitude of the Kenya 

 Highlands and other smaller mountainous ' islands ' to the south, and the 

 3,500 feet level which seems to characterise most of Tanganyika. Or 

 again, what are the prospects of making the ' fly belt ' suitable for white 

 settlement ? Or, granted favourable climatic and other physical condi- 

 tions, have the economic relations likely to be established between the 

 proposed white settlers and the native Bantu tribes been sufficiently 

 considered from the point of view of the uses which the two groups, in 

 the light of their race characters, antecedents and needs, are likely to 

 make of the land ? It is not cartographical surveys alone — -althougli 

 these are vital and the basis of all others- — ^which need to be made befurr 



