* 
SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS.—E, 405 
SECTION E.—GEOGRAPHY. 
Thursday, September 24. 
Dr. VaueHan Cornisa.—The National Park of Northumberland, a Shrine 
for Hadrian’s Wall. 
The National Park Committee in the Report presented to Parliament, April 1931, 
record their opinion that :— 
*, .. The Authority will no doubt desire to give effect as far as their funds will 
permit to Dr. Cornish’s principle of including at least one supreme example of each 
principal type of scenery ’ (page 20). 
In England the selection of supreme examples is comparatively simple in the case 
of mountain peaks, sea cliffs and river gorges, but in the great tract of moorland from 
Kinder Scout to the Scottish Border it is difficult to select any one area sufiiciently 
pre-eminent in natural beauty to ensure the permanent popularity necessary for 
success as a National Park. It is, however, manifestly desirable that the principal 
type of wild scenery in the North of England should be represented. I submit that 
the problem of selection would be best solved by giving the status of National Park 
to the moorland which surrounds the finest part of Hadrian’s Wall, where, between 
Chesters and Gilsland, this unrivalled historic monument runs for seventeen miles 
across the chine of Britain. Only by the preservation of this landscape in the wild 
state can the purpose and significance of the northern bulwark of Mediterranean 
civilisation be pictorially displayed. 
The value of the Park as a place of resort would be especially great for those 
societies and educational organisations whose work the National Park Committee 
desires to foster (vide Report, p. 11). It would also attract foreign visitors from 
countries which share with us the heritage of Rome. 
The proposed Park is set within an extensive area of wild scenery in which rivers, 
woods and waterfalls, and far-reaching views, provide attractions for ramblers; it 
is accessible from the industrial districts of Scotland ; and it is unique in its historic 
appeal to all three constituent nationalities of Great Britain. 
Discussion (The Right Hon. Sir Hatrorp J. Mackinper, P.C.), 
Dr. H. R. Mitu.—Geography at the British Association : a Retrospect. 
Many scientific men shared in the foundation of the Royal Geographical Society 
in 1830 and of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1831; Sir 
Roderick Murchison taking a leading part. In 1834, when the early informal Com- 
mittees of the British Association were organised as Sections, Murchison was mainly 
responsible for the creation of Section C, ‘ Geology and Geography,’ or, as it was often 
termed, ‘ Geography and Geology,’ and at his instance from 1838 to 1850, ‘ Geology 
and Physical Geography.’ In practice the geologists ran the Section, the travellers, 
explorers and colonial officials who then represented the geographical side, being held 
of little account. 
Tn 1851, when the old Section E—Medical Science—had been abandoned on account 
of the growing strength of the British Medical Association, Murchison secured the 
divorce of Geography from Geology and its union with Ethnology as a new Section E, 
which was known until 1868 as ‘ Geography and Ethnology.’ From 1869 onwards 
Section E has remained ‘Geography’ without addition or qualification. Under 
Murchison’s direction the Section outdistanced all the others in popularity, the 
famous travellers and explorers whom he induced to attend drawing immense 
audiences. 
The changes of designation hint at the gradual development of the conception of 
Geography as an independent science combining the physical and the human elements 
as aspects which were at first in contrast, but gradually combined to embrace the 
description and explanation of all the phenomena of terrestrial distributions both 
static and dynamic. It cannot be claimed that this Section was the main factor, but 
it undoubtedly supplied an important stimulus towards the development of 
Geography as now understood—a science based on mathematica conceptions of 
