naturally far more complete in all respects, and was certainly far superior to the maps of any other country existing at that time. This fact is brought home to us by an inspection of a collection of maps to be found in the well-known Theatrum Orbis of Ortelius (first published in 1570), where we may see that the maps supplied by Humphrey Lloyd and other British cartographers are still without degree-lines.

But when we follow Mercator, or, in fact, any other cartographer of the period, into regions the successful delineation of which depended upon an intelligent interpretation of itineraries and of other information collected by travellers, they are found to fail utterly. Nowhere is this utter absence of the critical faculty more glaringly exhibited than in the maps of Africa of that period.

The age of great discoveries was past. All blanks upon our maps had not yet been filled up; but the contours of the great continents stood out distinctly, and in the main correctly. Discoveries on a large scale had become impossible, except in the Polar regions and in the interior of some of the continents; but greater preciseness had to be given to the work already done, and many details remained to be filled in. In this "Age of Measurements," as Peschel significantly calls it, better instruments, and methods of observation superior to those which had sufficed hitherto, were needed, and were readily forthcoming.

Picard, by making use of the telescope in measuring angles (1667), obtained results of a degree of accuracy formerly quite unattainable, even with instruments of huge proportions. For the theodolite, that most generally useful surveying instrument, we are indebted to Jonathan Sission (1737 or earlier). More important still, at all events to the mariner, was the invention of the sextant, generally ascribed to Hadley (1731), but in reality due to the genius of Newton. Equally important was the production of a trustworthy chronometer by John Harrison (1761), which first made possible the determination of meridian distances, and is invaluable whenever a correct knowledge of the time is required. One other instrument, quite recently added to the apparatus of the surveyor, is the photographic camera, converted for his especial benefit into a photogrammeter. This instrument can perhaps never be utilised for ascertaining the relative positions of celestial bodies, but has already done excellent service in ordinary surveying, especially when it is required to portray the sides of inaccessible mountains.

But the full fruits of these inventions could be enjoyed only after Bradley had discovered the aberration of light (1728) and the nutation of the Earth's axis (1747); Domenique Cassini had furnished trustworthy tables of the refraction of light; and the complicated movement of the moon had been computed by Euler (1746), Tobias Mayer (1753), Bradley (1770), and, more recently, by Hansen.

Positively novel methods for determining the latitude and longitude of a place can scarcely be said to have been proposed during this period; but many of the older methods only became really available after the improvements in the instruments indicated above had taken place, and the computations had been freed from the errors which vitiated them formerly.

Real progress, however, has been made in the determination of altitudes. Formerly they could be ascertained only by trigonometrical measurement, or by a laborious process of levelling; but since physicists have shown how the decrease of atmospheric pressure with the altitude, and the boiling-point of water depending upon this decrease, afforded a ready means of determining heights, the barometer, aneroid, and boiling-point thermometer have become the indispensable companions of the explorer, and our knowledge of the relief of the land has advanced rapidly.

Equally rapid have been the improvements in our instruments for measuring the depth of the ocean, since a knowledge of the configuration of its bed was demanded by the practical requirements of the telegraph engineers.

And in proportion as the labours of the surveyors and explorers gained in preciseness, so did the cartographer of the age succeed in presenting the results achieved in a manner far more satisfactory than had been done by his predecessors. His task was comparatively easy so long as he only dealt with horizontal dimensions, though even in the representation of these a certain amount of skill and judgment are required to make each feature tell in proportion to its relative importance. The delineation of the inequalities of the Earth's surface, however, presented far greater difficulties. The mole-hills or serrated ridges, which had not yet quite disappeared from our maps in the beginning of this century, failed altogether in doing justice to our actual knowledge. The first timid attempt to represent hills as seen from a bird's-eye view, and of shading them according to the steepness of their slopes, appears on a map of the Breisgau, published by Homann in 1718. We find this system fully developed on La Condamine's map of Quito, published in 1751, and it was subsequently popularised by Arrowsmith. In this crude system of hill-shading, however, everything was left to the judgment of the draughtsman, and only after Lehmann (1783) had superimposed it upon a groundwork of contours, and had regulated the strength of the hatching in accordance with the degree of declivity to be represented did it become capable of conveying a correct idea of the configuration of the ground.

The first to fully recognise the great importance of contours was Philip Buache, who had prepared a contoured map of the Channel in 1737, and suggested that the same system might profitably be extended to a delineation of the relief of the land; and this idea, subsequently taken up by Ducarla of Vabres, was for the first time carried into practice by Dupain-Triel, who published a contoured map of France in 1791. Up to the present time more than eighty methods of showing the hills have been advocated, but it may safely be asserted that none of these methods can be mathematically correct, unless it is based upon horizontal contours.

The credit of having done most towards the promotion of cartography in the course of the eighteenth century belongs to France. It was France which first equipped expeditions to determine the size of the Earth; France which produced the first topographical map based upon scientific survey-a work begun by César François Cassini in 1744, and completed by his son five years after his father's death; it was France again which gave birth to D'Anville, the first critical cartographer which the world had ever seen.

Delisle (1675-1726), a pupil of Cassini's, had already been able to rectify the maps of the period by utilising the many astronomical observations which French travellers had brought home from all parts of the world. This work of reform was carried further by D'Anville (1697-1782), who swept away the fanciful lakes from off the face of Africa, thus forcibly bringing home to us the poverty of our know ledge; who boldly refused to believe in the existence of an Antarctic continent covering half the southern Hemisphere, and always brought sound judgment to bear upon the materials which the ever-increasing number of travellers placed at his disposal. And whilst France led the way, England did not lag far behind.

In that country the discoveries of Cook and of other famous navigators, and the spread of British power in India, gave the first impulse to a more diligent cultivation of the art of representing the surface of the Earth on maps. There, to a greater extent than on the Continent, the necessities of the navigator called into existence a vast number of charts, amongst which are many hundreds of sheets

published by Dalrymple and Joseph Desbarres (1776). Faden, one of the most prolific publishers of maps, won distinction especially for his county maps, several of which, like that of Surrey by Linley and Gardner, are based upon trigonometrical surveys carried out by private individuals. England was the first to follow the lead of France in undertaking a regular topographical survey (1785). Nor did she lack critical cartographers. James Rennell (b. 1742) sagaciously arranged the vast mass of important information collected by British travellers in India and Africa; but it is chiefly the name of Aaron Arrowsmith (died 1823) with which the glory of the older school of English cartographers is most intimately connected. Arrowsmith became the founder of a family of geographers, whose representative in the third generation, up to the date of his death in 1873, worthily upheld the ancient reputation of the family. Another name which deserves to be gratefully remembered is that of John Walker, to whom the charts published by our Admiralty are indebted for that perspicuous, firm, and yet artistic execution which, whilst it enhances their scientific value, also facilitates their use by the mariner.

Since the beginning of the present century Germany has once more become the headquarters of scientific cartography; and this is due as much to the inspiriting teachings of a Ritter and a Humboldt as to the general culture and scientific training, combined with technical skill, commanded by the men who more especially devoted themselves to this branch of geography, which elsewhere was too frequently allowed to fall into the hands of mere mechanics. Men like Berghaus, Henry Kiepert, and Petermann, the best-known pupil of the first of these, must always occupy a foremost place in the history of our department of knowledge. Berghaus, who may be truly described as the founder of the modern school of cartography, and who worked under the immediate inspiration of a Ritter and a Humboldt, presented us with the first comprehensive collection of physical maps (1837). Single maps of this kind had, no doubt, been published before-Kircher (1665) had produced a map of the ocean currents, Edmund Halley (1686) had embodied the results of his own researches in maps of the winds and of the varia tion of the compass (1686), whilst Ritter himself had compiled a set of physical maps (1866)—but no work of the magnitude of Berghaus's famous Physical Atlas had seen the light before. Nor could it have been published even then had it not been for the unstinted support of a firm like that of Justus Perthes, already the publisher of Stieler's Atlas (1817-23), and subsequently of many other works which have carried its fame into every quarter of the globe.

And now, at the close of this nineteenth century, we may fairly boast that the combined science and skill of surveyors and cartographers, aided as they are by the great advance of the graphic arts, are fully equal to the production of a map which shall be a faithful image of the Earth's surface. Let us imagine for one moment that an ideal map of this kind were before us, a map exhibiting not merely the features of the land and the depth of the sea, but also the extent of forests and of pasture-lands, the distribution of human habitations, and all those features the representation of which has become familiar to us through a physical and statistical atlas. Let us then analyse the vast mass of facts thus placed before us, and we shall find that they form quite naturally two well-defined divisions—namely, those of physical and political geography, whilst the third department of our science, mathematical geography, deals with the measurement and survey of our Earth, the ultimate outcome of which is the production of a perfect map.

I shall abstain from giving a laboured definition of what I consider geography should embrace, for definitions of this kind help practical workers but little, and will never deter any one, who feels disposed and capable, from straying into fields

VOL. VII.

2Q

which an abuse of logic has clearly demonstrated to lie outside his proper domain. But I wish to enforce the fact that topography and chorography, the description of particular places or of entire countries, should always be looked upon as integral portions of geographical research. It is they which furnish many of the blocks needed to rear our geographical edifice, and which constitute the best training school for the education of practical geographers, as distinguished from mere theorists.

That our maps, however elaborate, should be supplemented by descriptions will not even be gainsaid by those who are most reluctant to grant us our independent existence among the sciences which deal with the Earth and its inhabitants. This concession, however, can never content us. We cannot allow ourselves to be reduced to the position of mere collectors of facts. We claim the right to discuss ourselves the facts we have collected, to analyse them, to generalise from them, and to trace the correlations between cause and effect. It is thus that geography becomes comparative; and whilst comparative physical geography, or morphology, seeks to explain the origin of the existing surface-features of our Earth, comparative political geography, or anthropo-geography, as it is called by Dr. Ratzel, one of the most gifted representatives of geographical science in Germany, deals with man in relation to the geographical conditions which influence him. It is this department of geography which was so fruitfully cultivated by Karl Ritter.

Man is indeed in a large measure "the creature of his environment," for who can doubt for a moment that geographical conditions have largely influenced the destinies of nations, have directed the builders of our towns, determined the paths of migrations and the march of armies, and have impressed their stamp even upon the character of those who have been subjected to them for a sufficiently extended period?

The sterile soil of Norway, bordering upon a sea rich in fish, converted the Norwegians first into fishermen, and then into the bold mariners who ravaged the shores of Western Europe and of the Mediterranean and first dared to cross the broad waves of the Atlantic. Can it be doubted that the uniformly broad plains of Eastern Europe contributed largely to the growth of an empire like that of Russia, stretching from the Arctic to the Black Sea; or that the more varied configuration of Western and Southern Europe promoted the development of distinct nationalities, each having a history of its own and presenting individual traits which characteristically mark it off from its neighbours?

The intelligent political geographer cannot contemplate the great river-systems of the continents without becoming aware that their influence has been very diverse and is not solely dependent upon size or volume. The rivers of Siberia, ice-bound during the greater part of the year, run to waste into an inhospitable ocean, which even our modern resource of steam has failed to render really accessible. They contrast very unfavourably, notwithstanding their huge size, with the far smaller rivers of Northern Europe, which open freely into the sea and afford navigable highways into the very heart of the continent. And these European rivers, fed as they are by rain falling in all seasons, and by the ice stored up in the recesses of the Alps, again differ very widely in their character from the rivers of Tropical regions, dependent upon an intermittent supply of rain. Again, who can look upon such mighty rivers as the Amazons and Mississippi without becoming conscious of the fact that they have given geographical unity to regions of vast extent which, had their drainage been different, would have presented all the variety which we meet with in Europe-a variety which has proved so favourable to the progress of human culture and civilisation?

It is an old remark that climatic conditions exercise a most powerful influence upon man, and that the development of countries, where Nature yields the necessaries of life without requiring a serious effort on the part of the inhabitants, has been very different from those whose climatic conditions compel the putting forth of a certain amount of well-directed energy to make life bearable, or even possible. These instances of the dependence of human development upon natural resources and geographical features might be multiplied, and their study must at all times be profitable and instructive. It must not, however, be assumed for one moment that this dependence of man upon Nature is absolute. The natural resources of a country require for their full development a people of energy and capacity; and instances in which they have been allowed to lie dormant, or have been wasted, are numerous. What were America and Australia, as long as they remained only the homes of the wandering savages who originally inhabited them; and what has become of certain countries of the East, at one time among the most flourishing regions of the Earth, but presenting now a most deplorable picture of exhaustion and decay? The geographer must not shut his eyes to the fact that the existing state of affairs is not merely the outcome of given geographical conditions and natural resources, but has in a large measure been brought about by man's conquests over the forces of Nature. We do not exaggerate, for instance, when we assert that the introduction of steam as a motive-force has largely changed the geographical relations of countries. By facilitating intercourse between distant regions and encouraging travel, it has tended to uniformity among nations, and rendered available for the common good resources which otherwise must have lain fallow. A tunnel, such as that under the Saint Gotthard, may not have ‘abolished' the Alps, but it certainly has brought the populations who occupy their opposite slopes nearer to each other, and has given a new direction to commerce.

Perhaps one of the most instructive illustrations of the complex human agencies which tend to modify the relative importance of geographical conditions is presented to us by the Mediterranean. The time when this inland sea was the centre of civilisation and of the World's commerce, whilst the shores of Western Europe were only occasionally visited by venturesome navigators or conquering Roman hosts, does not lie so very far behind us. England, at that period, turned her face towards Continental Europe, of which it was a mere dependency. The prosperity of the Mediterranean countries survived far into the Middle Ages, and Italy at one time enjoyed the enviable position of being the great distributor of the products of the East, which found their way across the Alps into Germany, and through the gates of Gibraltar to the exterior ocean. But a change was brought about, partly through the closing of the old Oriental trade-routes, consequent upon the conquests of the Turks, partly through the discovery of a new world and of a maritime highway to India. When Columbus, himself an Italian, returned from the West Indies in 1493, and Vasco da Gama brought the first cargo of spices from India in 1499, the star of Italy began to fade. And whilst the spices of the Indies and the gold of Guinea poured wealth into the lap of Portugal, and Spain grew opulent on the silver mines of Mexico and Peru, Venice was vainly beseeching the Sultan to re-open the old trade-route through the Red Sea. The dominion of the sea had passed from Italy to Spain and Portugal, and passed later on to the Dutch and English. But mark how the great geographical discoveries of that age affected the relative geographical position of England! England no longer lay on the skirts of the habitable world, it had become its very centre. And this natural advantage was enhanced by the colonial policies of Spain and Portugal, who exhausted their strength in a task far beyond their powers, took possession of tropical countries only, and abandoned to England the less attractive but in reality far more valuable