SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XL No. 269 



industrial-art work, sewing, kindergarten work, drawing, map- 

 drawing, penmanship, clay-modelling, and manual work of every 

 kind produced in the schools. The pupils' work will form the most 

 important part of the exhibit, and will be a full and fair exhibit of 

 the regular work done in the schools since September last. An 

 interesting feature will be the historical exhibit. This will consist of 

 two schoolrooms so fitted up as to represent and contrast the 

 arrangement and conveniences for public-school education furnished 

 by Philadelphia to-day and half a century ago. This exhibit will 

 unquestionably prove a strong stimulus to progress and improve- 

 ment to the teachers and pupils of the Philadelphia schools, as well 

 as an attractive object of interest to those in other cities. 



ADDRESS OF HON. GARDINER G. HUBBARD, PRESI- 

 DENT OF THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY, 

 AT ITS FIRST MEETING, MARCH, 1888. 



I AM not a scientific man, nor can I lay claim to any special 

 knowledge that would entitle me to be called a ' geographer.' I 

 owe the honor of my election as president of the National Geo- 

 graphic Society simply to the fact that I am one of those who 

 desire to further the prosecution of geographic research. I possess 

 only the same general interest in the subject of geography that 

 should be felt by every educated man. 



By my election you notify the public that the membership of our 

 society will not be confined to professional geographers, but will 

 include that large number who, like myself, desire to promote 

 special researches by others, and to diffuse the knowledge so gained 

 among men, so that we may all know more of the world upon 

 which we live. 



By the establishment of this society, we hope to bring together 

 (1) the scattered workers of our country, and (2) the persons who 

 desire to promote their researches. In union there is strength, and 

 through the medium of a national organization we may hope to 

 promote geographic research in a manner that could not be accom- 

 plished by scattered individuals or by local societies ; we may also 

 hope (through the same agency) to diffuse the results of geographic 

 research over a wider area than would otherwise be possible. 



The position to which I have been called has compelled me to 

 become a student. Since my election I have been trying to learn 

 the meaning of the word ' geography,' and something of the his- 

 tory of the science to which it relates. The Greek origin of the 

 word (7 -yij, ' the earth ; ' and ypa^u, ' I write ') betrays the source 

 from which we derived the science, and shows that it relates to a 

 description of the earth. But the ' earth ' known to the Greeks was 

 a very different thing from the earth with which we are acquainted. 



To the ancient Greek it meant land ; not all land, but only a 

 limited territory, in the centre of which he lived. His earth com- 

 prised simply the Persian Empire, Italy, Egypt, and the borders of 

 the Black and Mediterranean Seas, besides his own country. Be- 

 yond these Umits the land extended indefinitely to an unknown 

 distance, till it reached the borders of the great ocean which com- 

 pletely surrounded it. 



To the members of this society the word ' earth ' suggests a very 

 different idea. The term arouses in our minds the conception of 

 an enormous globe suspended in empty space, one side in shadow, 

 and the other bathed in the rays of the sun. The outer surface of 

 this globe consists of a uniform, unbroken ocean of air, enclosing 

 another, more solid surface (composed partly of land, and partly of 

 water), which fairly teems with countless forms of animal and 

 vegetable life. This is the earth of which geography gives us a 

 description. 



To the ancients the earth was a fiat plain, solid and immovable, 

 and surrounded by water, out of which the sun rose in the east, 

 and into which it set in the west. To them ' geography ' meant 

 simply a description of the lands with which they were acquainted. 



Herodotus, who lived about the year 450 B.C., transmitted to 

 posterity an account of the world as it was known in his day. We 

 look upon him as the father of geography as well as of history. 

 He visited the known regions of the earth, and described accurately 

 what he saw, thus laying the foundations of comparative geog- 

 raphy. 



About 300 years B.C., Alexander the Great penetrated into 

 hitherto unknown regions, conquered India and Russia, and 

 founded the Macedonian Empire. He sent a naval expedition to 

 explore the coasts of India, accompanied by philosophers or learned 

 men, who described the new countries discovered and the character 

 of their inhabitants. This voyage may be considered as originat- 

 ing the science of political geography, or \)l\q geography of man. 



About the year 200 B.C., Eratosthenes of Cyrene, the keeper of 

 the Royal Library at Alexandria, became convinced, from experi- 

 m.ents, that the idea of the rotundity of the earth, which had been 

 advanced by some of his predecessors, was correct, and attempted 

 to determine upon correct principle the magnitude of the world. 

 The town of Cyrene, on the river Nile, was situated exactly under 

 the tropic, for he knew that on the day of the summer solstice the 

 sun's rays illuminated at noon the bottom of a deep well in that cily. 

 At Alexandria, however, on the day of the summer solstice, Eratos- 

 thenes observed that the vertical finger of a sun-dial cast a shadow 

 at noon, showing that the sun was not there exactly overhead. 

 From the length of the shadow he ascertained the sun's distance 

 from the zenith to be 7°i2', or one-fiftieth part of thecircumference 

 of the heavens ; from which he calculated, that, if the world was 

 round, the distance between Alexandria and Cyrene should be one- 

 fiftieth part of the circumference of the world. The distance be- 

 tween these cities was 5,000 stadia, from which he calculated that 

 the circumference of the world was fifty times this amount, or 250.- 

 000 stadia. Unfortunately we are ignorant of the exact length of 

 a stadium, so we have no means of testing the accuracy of his 

 deduction. He was the founder of mathematical geography. 



It became possible through the labors of Eratosthenes to de- 

 termine the location of places on the surface of the earth by means 

 of lines corresponding to our lines of latitude and longitude. 

 Claudius Ptolemy, in the second century of the Christian era, 

 made a catalogue of the positions of plans as determined by Eratos- 

 thenes and his successors, and, with this as his basis, he made a 

 series of twenty-six maps, thus exhibiting at a glance, in geographi- 

 cal form, the results of the labors of all who preceded him. To 

 him we owe the art of map-making, — the origination of geo- 

 graphic art. 



We thus see that when Rome began to rule the world, the 

 Greeks had made great progress in geography. They already 

 possessed comparative, political, and mathematical geography, and 

 geographic art, or the art of making maps. Then came a pause in 

 the progress of geography. 



The Romans were so constantly occupied with the practical 

 affairs of life, that they paid little attention to any other kind of 

 geography than that which facilitated the administration of their 

 empire. They were great road-builders, and laid out highways 

 from Rome to the farthest limits of their possessions. Maps of 

 their military roads were made, but little else. These exhibited 

 with accuracy the less and greater stations on the route from Rome 

 to India, and from Rome to the farther end of Britain. 



Then came the decline and fall of Rome, and with it the com- 

 plete collapse of geographical knowledge. In the dark ages, geog- 

 raphy practically ceased to exist. In the typical map of the mid- 

 dle ages, Jerusalem lay in the centre, with Paradise on the east, 

 and Europe on the west. It was not until the close of the dark 

 ages that the spirit of discovery was re-awakened. Then the ad- 

 venturous Northmen from Norway and Sweden crossed the ocean 

 to Iceland. 



From Iceland they proceeded to Greenland, and even visited the 

 mainland of North America about the year 1000 A.D., coasting as 

 far north as New England ; but these voyages led to no practi- 

 cal results, and were forgotten, or looked upon as myths, until 

 within a few years. For hundreds of years geography made but 

 little advance, and the discoveries of five centuries were less than 

 those now made in five years. In the fourteenth or fifteenth cen- 

 tury the mariner's compass was introduced into Europe from China, 

 and it then became possible to venture upon the ocean far out of 

 sight of land. Columbus, instead of coasting from shore to shore 

 like the ancient Northmen, boldly set sail across the Atlantic. To 

 many of his contemporaries it must have seemed madness to seek 

 the east by thus sailing towards the west, and we need hardly 

 wonder at the opposition experienced from his crew. The rotun- 



