1919.] 
New Zealand Institute Science Congress. 
285 
New Zealand ? ” It is not now “ What are the chief cereals grown in New 
Zealand ? ” but “ Locate the chief wheat, oats, barley, and maize centres 
in New Zealand, and say why each crop is grown so successfully in its 
special district.” 
It is this new feature that makes geography a subject eminently suitable 
for university work. It provides scope for research, scope for theorizing, 
scope for the very highest powers of the intellect. The reform has been 
brought about by the good work of the university lecturers in different 
parts of the world. The same reform could be brought about here in New 
Zealand if we had similar university men at work uplifting the subject 
from its despised place in the country to its proper rank with its fellows 
in the academic world. 
The reform has been possible also because of the recent developments 
in another subject—botany. Plant ecology has given the botanists new 
inspiration, and opened up new fields of research. Plant ecology, for 
geography, has made possible the creation of natural regions, and trans¬ 
formed the method of studying the subject. The political unit is not now 
of supreme importance, but the natural unit. It is not now a question of 
learning laboriously the list of products of a country whose boundaries are 
artificially fixed by political aspirations, but a question of investigating 
what products naturally go together, and of discovering the conditions 
bringing about this association, and of discovering in what other parts of 
the world the same conditions exist. The method is one based upon a 
recognition of cause and effect, and geographical teaching can now follow 
a definite line of its own. Man’s activities are determined by conditions 
on the earth’s surface, mainly with reference to natural products ; natural 
products depend upon climate ; climate upon heat and temperature ; and 
these again upon well-known conditions. Only the main lines of the method 
are indicated ; the details include a complete investigation of all geographical 
phenomena. The fuller development waits upon the further investigations 
of the botanists along the lines of plant ecology, but geography is rapidly 
becoming a well-organized subject worthy of every attention. 
There is one other educational aspect of the subject I should like to 
touch upon—that is, the close connection that exists between geographical 
conditions and the progress of the world’s history. It seems to me that 
our history courses must be widened to include, somewhere early in our 
educational system, a survey of world-history ; and if the survey were 
based upon a recognition of the immense influence that has been exerted 
by geographical conditions it would be both interesting and instructive. 
Geographical conditions made it possible for Egyptian civilization to arise 
so early in the course of world events ; they made Babylon possible, Greece 
possible, and Borne ; not only made possible the supremacy of these nations, 
but actually determined the order in which they should rise into power. 
Geographical discoveries shifted the centre of civilization from inside the 
Mediterranean to the outside. Geographical conditions made Great Britain 
the power she is to-day. In the face of these great ideas we persist in 
teaching interesting but extremely insignificant historical stories of what 
King Alfred did, or Queen Elizabeth, or William Pitt, as if these things 
determined the progress of the world. If in the days to come we are to 
develop beyond the petty boundaries of a narrow nationalism into the 
broader field of a grander internationalism, then there must be radical 
changes in our historical studies. One of these changes will be, inevitably, 
a fuller recognition of the part played by geographical conditions in deter¬ 
mining the path of the world’s-progress. 
