1919.] New Zealand Institute Science Congress. 283 
beyond the highest standard of the primary schools, and have had, pre¬ 
sumably, instruction in geography: “A mariner’s compass is used to 
determine latitude and longitude.” “ A number of extinct volcanoes are 
present in the Southern Alps, Mount Cook being the chief one.” Again, 
“It is a glorious sight to see the three active volcanoes, Ngauruhoe, 
Tongariro, and Ruapehu, smoking away and hurling masses of molten lava 
up into the air.” And again, “ The air in Mesopotamia is so thin that it 
bursts the blood-vessels of our men fighting out there.” 
The first point I would like to emphasize in my paper is this : that 
members should wherever possible help to disseminate accurate know¬ 
ledge of geographical facts, especially of the facts of physical geography. 
Popular lectures, articles in the daily papers, correct explanations of any 
natural phenomena that may happen to arouse public attention—these 
things are needed urgently to-day to counteract all the errors and super¬ 
stitions of the schoolroom and of the market-place. People without 
scientific training—and many teachers are such—find it extremely difficult 
to follow technical papers, but lectures on geography can be given popu¬ 
larly yet accurately, and illustrations of all aspects of the subject are 
abundant in New Zealand. 
The subject geography is an eminently suitable one for primary-school 
work. I would like to emphasize only one aspect of this question. I do 
not want to talk about the mental training possible, nor the interest 
aroused in children by the subject, nor the cultivation of the imagination 
possible, nor any other similar point in school method, excellent as all these 
things are ; but rather to emphasize this : that by means of geography 
one can teach nearly all the science that is necessary in the primary school. 
Geography can be made the one great central science subject of the school, 
including all the others except hygiene and physiology. Let me give some 
illustrations. You teach the climate of a country. Climate depends upon 
temperature and rainfall. To teach temperature you must teach thermo¬ 
meters, and thermometers depend upon the expansion of a liquid. Here, 
then, is a suitable and a correct bit of practical physics for the school 
laboratory—a lesson on the expansion of liquids. Again, climate depends 
on rainfall, rainfall upon winds. Winds are convection currents, and 
convection currents supply another well-known bit of practical physics, 
the transference of heat through gases. Rainfall depends upon evaporation 
and condensation, and here again is ample scope for suitable scientific 
work ; and so on. The possibilities are infinite and tremendous, given the 
right kind of teacher. Specific heat, the composition of the atmosphere, 
the distribution of plants, botanical studies, meteorology, work of rivers 
and glaciers are but to mention other possible studies. Simple as all this 
seems, it is seldom done. Not only can the science work be introduced in 
this way, but it is infinitely better that it should be introduced in this way. 
It gives the practical work in science a definite place in the scheme of 
things ; it is not an isolated piece of work of no importance, unrelated 
until the pupil, years afterwards, happens to come across it again in a 
physics course at the University. The work is done to solve a problem 
that has cropped up in the course of the daily work in geography, and as 
such remains in the memory as an accurate explanation of a natural 
phenomenon. If science were taught more often in this way it would be 
less vague and indefinite. Such an example as the following would be an 
impossibility. The pupil was asked to define “ specific heat ” and give its 
geographical significance, and this is the reply from a high-school scholar : 
