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E.—GEOGRAPHY. 103 
environment of every other natural region, how remote soever on the 
earth’s surface, and from this it follows that the supreme vision of the 
geographically trained mind is of the world whole. The geographer takes 
over from the astronomer, physicist, chemist, geologist, biologist, historian, 
economist, and strategist certain results of their special studies, combines 
them into his own vision of a dynamic system, builds up his natural regions, 
and finally groups these into his world conception. 
When I was in Africa I remember seeing before me a great billowing 
slope, clothed with dense forest, dark green and burnished in the sunshine. 
I entered and traversed that forest for a long day. When I emerged and 
looked back there was the same forest, and yet to my vision it was not 
the same, for I could now appreciate its texture ; I had not merely sight 
of it, but insight. So it is with the trained geographer, he starts on the 
shoulders of the scientific specialists, he traverses his natural regions, and 
emerges with a new grasp and insight of the world as a whole. This, if 
I mistake not, will be his essential contribution to the shaping of our 
human destiny in the not far distant future. 
In the world view of the geographer what are the major features of 
Humanity and the Human Habitat ? Surely they are two, the East and 
the West. Let me try to set in perspective some salient facts. 
The monsoon winds sweep into and out of Asia because that vast 
land lies wholly north of the equator and is, therefore, as a whole, 
subject to an alternation of seasons. Over an area of some five million 
square miles in the south and east of Asia, from India to Manchuria, and 
in the great adjacent islands, the monsoon drops annually a rainfall 
amounting on the average of years to some 18 million millions of 
tons. Half of mankind, 900 million people, live in the natural regions of 
this area; about 180 to the square mile. The rainfall is, therefore, of 
the order of some 20 thousand tons annually for each inhabitant. There 
is a considerable traflic between the regions of the group, and there are the 
fisheries ; in order to see it whole let us add three million more square 
miles for the marginal and landlocked seas. Then we shall have a total 
of eight million square miles, or 4 per cent. of the globe surface, carrying 
50 per cent. of the human race. The annual increase of population may 
amount to some seven or eight millions, and as compared with this figure 
both emigration and immigration into and from the outer world are 
small. In the main we have here vast stable peasantries, ‘ ascript to the 
glebe,’ if we may use a medieval legal expression; tied to the soil; a 
tremendous fact of rain, sap, and blood. That is the Kast. 
The West lies in Europe, south and west of the Volga, and in that 
eastern third of North America which includes the main stream of the 
Mississippi and the basin of the St. Lawrence. Europe within the Volga 
boundary measures some three million square miles, and eastern North 
America some two million square miles. The two together are, therefore, 
equivalent in area of land to the group of regions which constitutes the 
Hast. Ii we add three million square miles for the fisheries and the oceanic 
_ belt which contains the ‘shipping lanes’ between Kurope and North 
America, we shall again have a total of 4 per cent. of the globe surface, 
and that is the main geographical habitat of western civilisation. Within 
this area are 600 million people, or 120 to the square mile of land. Not- 
