Geography of the Land. 133 



Large areas of this interesting country have not yet been revealed 

 to us, nor can we expect to acquire a full knowledge of its Geo- 

 graphic wonders until the means of internal communication have 

 become more assured. 



The recent inauguration of a Geographical Society in Peru is 

 also an important step towards our acquirement of more detailed 

 information, and doubtless will redound to the credit of its found- 

 ers in the interest it will stimulate in kindred societies over the 

 world. 



Geology is a science so intimately connected with Geography 

 that I should feel delinquent did I not include a reference to it in 

 this report, however inadequate my remarks may be to do justice 

 to the subject. 



To Geographers the origin of the varied distribution of the 

 land and water, the cause and growth of mountains, plains, 

 oceans, lakes and rivers, the great changes that have taken place 

 on the face of the earth in times past, is of absorbing interest, 

 rivaled only by their desire for perfect knowledge of that which 

 may be seen to-day. Had the prehistoric man been gifted with 

 the intelligence of his descendants in the present epoch, he would 

 have left for us a record that would have been valuable indeed 

 and cleared our way of much that now is speculation, and but 

 too often food for words. True it is, however, that if the 

 mysteries of the past were revealed to us we should lose the 

 pleasures their study affords and perhaps there would follow a 

 degeneration of species through the loss of stimulus they now 

 provide. How long ago man lived and might have made a rec- 

 ord is still a disputed question, but one that involves too, the rec- 

 ord of the earth herself. The association of human remains in 

 the Glacial drift brings that epoch in the earth's history nearer to 

 us by several hundred thousand years, and instead of speculating 

 upon it as having occurred nearly a million years ago, geologists 

 must consider whether it was not probably coincident with the 

 most recent eccentricity of the earth which astronomers teach us 

 happened about ten or fifteen thousand years ago. Geology must 

 also fit her facts to mathematical science if we give credence to 

 latest computations. A mathematician has now advanced the the- 

 ory that at the average depth of about five miles below the surface 

 there is a belt of " no strain," the result of opposing forces above 

 and below it, a belt that from the nature of the case is impenetra- 

 ble, through which, what is above cannot pass to what is below, 

 and what is below cannot pass to what is above, a condition that 



