390 THE FUNCTION AND FIELD OF GEOGRAPHY. 



colonize that part of the world with people from the temperate zone. 

 This is the lesson taught by generations of experience of Europeans in 

 India. So far, also, sad experience has shown that white people can not 

 hope to settle in central Africa as they have settled in Canada and the 

 United States and in Australia, and make it a nursery and a home for 

 new generations. Even in such favorable situations as Blantyre, a lofty 

 region on the south of Lake Nyasa, children can not be reared beyond 

 a certain age; they must be sent home to England, otherwise they will 

 degenerate physically and morally. ISTo country can ever become the 

 true home of a people if the children have to be sent away to be reared. 

 Still, it is true our experience in Africa is limited. It has been main- 

 tained that it might be possible to adapt Europeans to tropical Africa 

 by a gradual process of migration. Transplant southern Europeans to 

 North Africa; after a generation or two remove their progeny farther 

 south, and so on, edging the succeeding generation farther aud farther 

 into the heart of the continent. The expeiiment — a long one it would 

 be — might be tried; but it is to be feared that the ultimate result 

 would be a race deprived of all those characteristics which have madtA 

 Europe what it is. An able young Italian physician. Dr. Sambon, has 

 recently faced this important problem, and has not hesitated to come 

 to conclusions quite opposed to those generally accepted. His position 

 is that it has taken us centuries in Europe to discover our hidden 

 enemies, the microbes of the various diseases to which northern human 

 ity is a prey, and to meet them and to conquer them. In Africa we have 

 a totally different set of enemies to meet, from lions and snakes down 

 to the invisible organisms that produce those forms of malaria, antemia, 

 and other diseases characteristic of tropical countries. He admits that 

 these are more or less due to heat, to the nature of the soil, and other 

 tropical conditions, but that if once we knew their precise nature and 

 modes of working we should be in a position to meet them and conquer 

 them. It may be so, but this is a result that could only be reached 

 after generations of experience and investigation; and even Dr. Sam- 

 bon admits that the ultimate product of European acclimatization in 

 Africa would be something quite different from the European progeni- 

 tors. What is wanted is a series of carefully conducted experiments. 

 I have referred to the Blantyre highlands; in British East Africa there 

 are plateaus of much greater altitude, and in other parts of central 

 Africa there are large areas of 4,000 feet and over above sea level. The 

 world may become so full that we may be forced to try to utilize these 

 lofty tropical regions as homes for white people when Canada and 

 Australia and the United States become over populated. As one of 

 my predecessors in this chair (Mr.Eavenstein) tried to show at the Leeds 

 meeting some years ago, the population of the world will have more 

 than doubled in a century, and about one hundred and eighty years 

 hence will have quadrupled. At any rate, here is a problem of prime 

 importance for the geographer of the coming century to attack; with 



