210 GEOGRAPHIC DESCRIPTION OF THE BRITISH ISLANDS 
raphy in the colleges and universities of a country where its 
neglect is now so much deplored. 
To all parts of the work might be applied the remark intro- 
duced by Dr Mill under “ historical information.” It should be 
“ very stringently edited, so as to confine it strictly to those 
features and events of direct geographical importance.” The 
varied standards of articles in the current geographical journals 
indicate so vague an idea of tlie essential quality of geographical 
discipline that this stringent editing will surely be needed in 
every chapter of the proposed memoirs. Care must be taken 
that the volumes do not become so many encyclopedias of sub- 
jects that have not a “ direct geographical importance.” Local 
floras and faunas, for example, which stand in the list of sug- 
gested topics, might easily depart entirely from geography and 
become pure biology. ISIere lists of species have practically no 
geographical bearing. If treated with relation to distribution 
they gain a touch of geographical quality ; but if their distri- 
bution is used to reinforce the appreciation of conditions of 
form, altitude, soil, and climate they become as fully geograph- 
ical as any other means of enlightened description. So with 
the study of population. Numerical tables extracted from 
census reports omit the essential quality of relationship that 
characterizes geogra}>hy proper. True geographical study is 
needed to bring out the meaning of numbers and their depend- 
ence on physiographical conditions. \Te believe that Dr Mill 
appreciates these principles very fully, but there is a possibilit}’- 
that others who will probably cooperate with him are not so 
fully impressed by them, and that a committee of editors as a 
whole might not see the importance of excluding mere tabula- 
tions of species, of population, and similar unrelated records from 
the memoirs, unless the principle of relationship is insisted on 
from the beginning. 
There is no place in the world that is today so favorably situated 
for the undertaking of a work of this kind as are the British Isl- 
ands. Well defined b}'^ insular position, a compact embodiment 
of greatly varied forms, a seat of vast power and wealth, the rest 
of the world may hope to have the model of geographical mono- 
graphs there established. There is, on the whole, no society in 
the world better fitted to encourage and support such an under- 
taking than the Royal Geographical Society of London — estab- 
lished in the world’s center of commerce, the resort of great 
numbers of explorers, travelers, and others of geographic sym- 
