SECTION E.—GEOGRAPHY. 
GEOGRAPHY AS MENTAL EQUIPMENT 
ADDRESS BY 
THE RT. HON. LORD MESTON, K.C.S.I., 
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION, 
Most of us believe that every branch of human knowledge wisely 
pursued—every true science, in fact—provides training for the intellect, 
furniture for the mind, and solace for the spirit. That this claim can 
justly be made on behalf of geography is the argument of an amateur 
observer in the present paper. ‘To hear geography described as a 
science at all comes not without an element of surprise to many in our 
older generation, whose education followed normal lines in the third or 
the early fourth quarter of last century. To them geography was the 
dreariest part of their school curriculum, an arid catalogue of physical 
features and figures. ‘To-day it presents itself as a systematic grouping 
of facts, with their causes and their effects, fascinating in their variety and 
vividly human in their interest. In this sense it is a new science, so new 
that many of its devotees mournfully speak of it as the Cinderella of 
sciences. It is, says Dr. H. R. Mills, a synthetic science—and most 
synthetic products are relatively new—deriving its data largely from 
geology, meteorology, anthropology, and other bordering sciences. Its 
youth, however, is among its charms ; and for its entry into the fraternity 
of sciences it has two illustrious sponsors. One is the gallant succession 
of explorers of the earth’s surface, whose enterprise, though it never 
ceases, has reached a definite stage of accomplishment with the opening 
up of Arabia, the surveys of the Antarctic continent, and the flight over 
Everest. The other is the growing body of students engaged on the 
human aspects of geography, in tracing out the relations between 
man and his physical environment, which constitute its philosophic 
basis. 
Being anxious to avoid all shadow of controversy, I must here pause 
to register the claim, pressed by Professor Burrows among others, that 
geography is not young but very old, as old at least as Ptolemy, a mother 
science which has given birth to astronomy, botany, archzology, as well 
as the other specialised sciences already mentioned. Which of these 
two views is the more orthodox may be left for another day. What is 
common to them both is that geography is a function of a number of 
_ other sciences ; and one of the difficulties attending its future may quite 
_ possibly be that of establishing boundaries between it and them, whether 
