The Spirit and Purpose of Geography

For the land, whither thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of Egypt, . . . where thou sowedst thy seed, and wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs: But the land, whither ye go to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven. . . .

DEUTERONOMY, xi.

Nature and Art in this together suit:
What is most grand is always most minute.

WILLIAM BLAKE.

I N the last five chapters we have reviewed fields of knowledge, each of which is evidently a branch of geography, contributing its part to the geographer's full equipment and also affording scope for specialization. Each of them makes contact with one or more other science and could in no sense be studied in complete ignorance of these sciences.

Cartography and Historical Geography stand rather apart from the rest. The former is essentially a subject in its own right and not a branch of geography, yet the dependence of the geographer on maps is so great that the subject or large parts of it becomes his by adoption and use. Historical Geography can be viewed from two standpoints. In so far as we restrict its proper aim to the reconstruction of past geographies, in the attempt to "reclothe" the historic present for selected past times, it is necessarily a specialized field demanding the full rigours of historical scholarship. In a more general sense it is true to say that the point of view and methods of thought of Historical Geography must inform the whole sub

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