THE SCOTTISH

GEOGRAPHICAL

MAGAZINE.

ADDRESS TO THE GEOGRAPHICAL SECTION OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION, 1901.

By HUGH ROBERT MILL, D.SC., LL.D., F.R.S.E., F.R.G.S.,
President of the Section.

ON RESEARCH IN GEOGRAPHICAL SCIENCE.

Introductory. --The annual reassembling of friends and fellow-workers in the old revisited towns, and the annual accession of new lovers of science, furnish an unique opportunity for a survey of the advances made in each department, a fitting occasion also for remembering those who have finished their work and can aid our deliberations only by the memory of their example.

Apart from our more intimate losses in the death of many distinguished geographers and devoted workers, the period since our last meeting has been for all a year of mourning. The passing of the nineteenth century was almost like the death of a friend, and it is still difficult to realise that the century which we had been so long in the habit of associating with everything new and great and progressive has itself become part of the past. Few coincidences have been more striking than the almost simultaneous close of that unparalleled reign which gave a name to the Era including all that was best and most characteristic of the century. The death of Queen Victoria carried so keen a sense of personal loss into every heart that few attempts have been made to show how vast a portion of the stream of time-measured by progress -intervened between the terminal dates of her life. Think for a moment of the splendid advances in the one small department of geographical exploration during the late Queen's reign, the multitude of landmarks which have been crowned by the great name of Victoria-of the earth's most southerly land and its most 20

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northerly sea, of the largest lake and most majestic waterfall of Africa, the loftiest lake of Asia, the highest peak in New Guinea, the widest desert and most populous colony in Australia, and of the two thriving seaports on either side of the North Pacific which couple together the British Dominions of western America and eastern Asia.

What could be more appropriate in this first meeting after the close of such a century and of such a reign than to pass in brief but appreciative review the advances of geography during those hundred or those sixtyfive years? One thing in my opinion is more appropriate than to dwell on past triumphs or to regret past greatness, and that is to survey our present position and look ahead. In the first year of a new century and of a new reign we are reminded that we have a future to face and that the world is before us, and I propose to seize this opportunity in order to speak of the science of geography as it is now understood, and especially to urge the importance of the more systematic pursuit of geographical research henceforward.

Geography in the Universities.-The prospect of immediate expansion in many British universities seems at last likely to afford more than one opportunity of wiping out the old disgrace of the neglect of geographical science in the accredited seats of learning. Already Oxford has a wellmanned School of Geography, and Cambridge has a Reader in Geography. The reconstituted University of London occupies the best position in the world for creating a chair of geographical research, situated as it is in the very centre of the comings and goings of all mankind, and in touch with the most complete geographical library and map collection in existence. The new University of Birmingham may, it is hoped, prove better than its promises, and may perhaps after all provide some more adequate treatment of geography than its proposed partition amongst the professors of half a dozen special subjects, all of them concerned in geography, it is true, but none of them individually, nor all of them collectively, capable of embodying that co-ordination of parts into an harmonious unity which gives to geography its power as a mental discipline and its value for practical application. But England in all that pertains to higher education is still a poor country, and the will to do well is hampered by the grinning demon of poverty. Here, on the other side of the Border, we are in a different atmosphere. The wave of the magician's wand in the hands of Andrew Carnegie has brought wealth that last year would have been deemed fabulous to the ancient universities in Scotland, and it will be a disgrace to our country if this splendid generosity does not result in the establishment of one or more fully endowed and completely equipped chairs of geography.

There may still be some people who view geography as the concern only of soldiers and sailors, adventurous travellers, and perhaps of elementary teachers. Exploration is undoubtedly the first duty of geographers, but it is a duty which has been well done, the nineteenth century having left us only one problem of the first magnitude. This is the exploration of the Polar regions, and even here the twentieth century clamours for new methods.

The Antarctic Expeditions.-This year has seen the long-hoped-for Antarctic expeditions set out on their great quest, a quest not only of new lands in the southern ice-world, but of scientific information regarding all the conditions of the vast unknown region. Two expeditions have been planned in Great Britain and Germany with a complete interchange of information regarding equipment and methods of work. Provision has been made for simultaneous magnetic and meteorological observations, and in some instances for the use of instruments of identical construction, and all possibility of any unseemly rivalry in striving for the childish distinction of getting farthest south has been obviated by the friendly understanding that the British ship shall explore the already fairly known Ross quadrant, where it is pretty sure that extensive and accessible land will favour exploration by sledges, while the Germans have chosen the entirely unknown area of the Enderby quadrant which no ice-protected steamer has yet attempted to penetrate, and where they enter a region of potential discovery before they cross the Antarctic circle.

The British Expedition is equipped on the good old plan that produced such fine results in the days of Cook and Ross; it is manned by sailors of the Royal Navy and is under the command of a gallant naval officer, though, unlike the earlier vessels, the Discovery is not herself a naval ship. As in the days of Cook the naval officers are assisted in their non-professional work by several young and promising scientific men, two of whom have already had experience of work in the Polar regions. These have the great advantage of the counsel and help of Mr. George Murray of the British Museum, who goes as far as Melbourne in the position of Director of the Scientific Staff.

No one who has seen the zeal and unflagging enthusiasm with which Sir Clements Markham has organised the expedition can hesitate to accord to him in fullest measure the credit for its successful inauguration. And no one who has seen the quiet and good-humoured determination of the commander, Captain R. F. Scott, in overcoming many irritating preliminary difficulties, can doubt his fitness to undertake the heavy responsibilities of the voyage. I at least am sure that he will be a worthy successor to Cook, Ross, Franklin, Nares, and all the other. officers who have made their names and the name of the British Navy famous in Polar service. The second in command, Lieutenant Armitage, R.N.R., has had several years of Arctic experience, and among the crew there are some old whalers whose knowledge of the ways of sea-ice should prove of value. The ship and her equipment are unique; it is no exaggeration to say that she is the best-found and most comfortable. vessel which has ever left our shores on a voyage of discovery.

The German Expedition has been more boldly planned than ours. It is new and experimental all through, as befits a young nation in its first exuberant efforts in a new field. If some people suppose that it may have made mistakes that our expedition has avoided; these at least are new mistakes from which new lessons are to be learned. If risks must be run-and we of the twentieth century are, I trust, no more timid of incurring risks than our predecessors of the nineteenth, or

the eighteenth, or even the seventeenth-it is good that they should be new risks. To scientific men in Germany it appears natural and reasonable that a man of science should be the head of a scientific expedition; and that a geographer should lead a geographical expedition. Many British men of science sympathise in this view. Dr. Erich von Drygalski, one of the professors of geography in the University of Berlin, has been intrusted with the command to which he was appointed before the ship was designed, and for five years he has given all his time and thought to the expedition. He is supported by a band of highly trained specialists, who have spared neither time nor travel in mastering the subjects with which they may deal, and each has also received a general training in the subjects of all his colleagues—an admirable precaution. The captain of the Gauss, who belongs to the Merchant Service, has taken a course of training from the Norwegian whalers off Spitzbergen. He will, of course, be absolute master of the ship and crew in all that concerns order and safety, but he will be under the direction of the leader in all that concerns the plan of the voyage and the execution of scientific work. This arrangement is one which has always seemed to me to be desirable, that the captain of a ship on scientific service should occupy a position in relation to the scientific chief similar to that of the captain of a yacht in relation to the owner; but it is subject to the drawback that a naval officer could not well be asked to accept such a divided command.

But whatever our views as to ideal organisation may be, we are all certain that both expeditions will do the utmost that they can to justify the confidence that is placed in them and to bring honour to their flags. We know that the officers and staff of the Discovery belong to a race which, whether trained in the university or in the navy, has acquired the habit of bringing back splendid results from any quest that is undertaken.

A Definition of Geography-The bright prospects of Antarctic exploration must not, however, blind us to the fact that exploration is not geography, nor is the reading or even the writing of text-books, nor is the making of maps, despite the recognition of leading cartographers as Geographers to the King." These are amongst the departments of geography, but the whole is greater than its parts.

The view of the scope and content of geography which I have arrived at as the result of much work and some little reading during twenty years is substantially that held by most modern geographers. But it is right to point out that the mode of expressing it may not be accepted without amendment by any of the recognised leaders of the science, and for my own part I believe that discussion rather than acceptance is the best fate that can befall any attempt at stating scientific truth. Put in the fewest words, my opinion is that

Geography is the science which deals with the forms of relief of the Earth's crust, and with the influence which these forms exercise on the distribution of all other phenomena.

This definition looks to the form and composition of the Earth's crust itself, and to the successive coverings, partial and complete, in which the stony globe is wrapped. We sometimes hear of the New Geography,

but I think it is more profitable to consider the present position of Geography as the outcome of the thought and labours of an unbroken chain of workers, continuously modified by the growth of knowledge, yet old in aim, old even in the expression of many of the ideas that we are apt to consider the most modern.

Some Historical Landmarks. Claudius Ptolemæus, about 150 A.D., gathered into his great Geography the whole outcome of the Greek study of the habitable world. He laid stress on the threefold nature of descriptions of the Earth's surface: the general sketch of the great features of the world alone receiving the name of Geography, the more special description of an area he termed Chorography, and the detailed account of a particular place Topography.

Aristotle, who first adduced real proofs of the sphericity of the Earth, had not failed to note the relationships which exist between plants and animals, and the places in which they are found, and he argued that the character of peoples was influenced by the land in which they lived; but Ptolemy cared little for theories, comparisons, or relationships, confining himself rather to the record of actual facts. He made errors, the results of which were more important, as it happened, in advancing knowledge than were the truths which he recorded; for after the troubled mediæval sleep, when even the spherical form of the Earth was blotted out of the knowledge of Christendom, the scientific deductions made by Toscanelli from the false premises of Ptolemy heartened Columbus for his westward voyage to the Indies, on the very outset of which he stumbled all unknowing on the New World. When Magellan succeeded in the enterprise which Columbus had commenced, the fourteen centuries' reign of Ptolemy in geography came to an end; his work was done.

The rapid unveiling of the Earth in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries cast a glamour over feats of exploration which has not yet been wholly dissipated, and it may not be easy, even now, to obtain wide credence for the fact that the explorer is usually but the collector of raw material for the geographer.

It is of vital interest to trace the re-formation of the theory of geography after its interruption in the Middle Ages. The fragments of the old Greek lore were cemented together by new and plastic thoughts: crudely enough by Apian, Gemma Frisius, and Sebastian Munster in the sixteenth century, but with increasing strength and completeness by Cluverius, Carpenter, and Varenius in the seventeenth.

The First Oxford Geographer.-The names of Cluverius and Varenius are familiar to every historian of geography; but that of Carpenter, I am afraid, is now brought to the notice of many geographical students for the first time. He was not so great as Varenius; but he was the first British geographer to write on theoretical geography as distinguished from mathematical treatises on navigation or the repetition of narratives. of travel, and I think that there is evidence to show that his work had an influence on his great Dutch contemporary.