Geographical Terms

GEOGRAPHICAL TERMS Biogeography takes account of the distribution of living or ganisms on the surface of the globe. As a matter of practical con venience the term is usually limited to the land surface, leaving the life in the sea to be treated as a subdivision of oceanography. The biogeography of the land is divided into Phytogeography which deals with the distribution of plants and Zoogeography which is concerned with the distribution of animals. The distri bution of plants is controlled mainly by soil, climate and barriers to the natural spread of seed. The older students of biogeography devoted most attention to the distribution of species and divided the surface of the earth into regions in which similar species preponderated. The difficulty of deciding the boundaries of such areas lies in the fact that each small group of allied species re quires a geographical classification of its own. By making various compromises different phytogeographers have put forward schemes of subdivision of which that of Oscar Drude is typical. Drude adopted the climate zones as his chief units dividing them according to the continents, (z) the Arctic-Alpine Zone including all regions bordering perpetual snow, (2) the Boreal Zone includ ing the temperate parts of the three northern continents, (3) the Tropical Zone divided into that of America and that of Africa and Asia, (4) the Austral Zone including the very dissimilar sub regions of South America, South Africa and Australia, and (6) Oceanic including all oceanic islands. Zoogeographers have, in like manner, endeavoured to divide the earth's surface into faunal regions according to the occurrence of similar species. P. L. Sclater's divisions take account of a large number of facts; they are (I) Palaearctic including Europe with Africa north of the Atlas range and Asia north of the Himalayas, (2) Ethiopian in cluding Africa south of the Atlas and Madagascar, (3) Oriental including southern Asia and the northern half of the Malay Archipelago, (4) Australian including the southern islands of the Malay Archipelago, Australia, New Zealand and Polynesia, (5) Nearctic or North America and (6) Neotropical or South America.

Ecology.—In the last thirty years biogeographers have devoted increasing attention to ecology which means the relation of organ isms or groups of organisms to their environment, and as the fac tors of environment are very largely geographical the ecological as distinct from the floristic or faunistic distribution of plants and animals is now an object of active geographical research. The associations of plants which thrive in the same environment give a distinctive character to a district, and the variable factors are so numerous that any complete classification of the districts must be complicated. The subject is dealt with in great detail from the botanical point of view in PLANTS : Ecology. Here it is enough to indicate the broad outlines of successive ecological zones (each susceptible of minute sub-division) from the pole to the equator based on the habit and luxuriance of growth of the several associa tions. They are (I) Polar Ice Desert where there is practically no life (2) Frozen Tundra, the surface of which thaws in summer and bears mosses and dwarf herbage, the growing period being short, moisture being abundant and temperature low, this merges through temperate bogs and moorlands to (3) Temperate Forests of ever green or deciduous trees where the growing season is longer, rain fall and temperature are moderate, (4) Temperate Steppe or prairie where rainfall is scanty and temperature extreme while grasses and bulbous plants predominate. (5) Arid Desert with rainfall at a minimum and range of temperature at a maximum allowing only the sparsest growth of plants specially modified to conserve moisture. (6) Tropical Bush where the growing period is restricted by drought; high temperature and light rainfall favour grass and shrubs and (7) Equatorial Forest where great heat and abundant moisture encourages the most exuberant vegetation as the growing season is continuous throughout the year. Each plant association and the animals which accompany it tends to get into adjustment with the geographical environ ment and to extend its district as far as natural barriers permit. Any change brought about from without, such as the incursion of new species or the destruction of some of those established dis turbs the balance of life and may lead to very remarkable changes. The study of the flora and fauna of primitive lands separated by barriers opposing various degrees of resistance to the migration of species led Darwin, Wallace and Hooker to develop the theory of the evolution of species by natural selection. The same phenomena seen in the light of ecology enable geologists to sketch the distribution of land and sea in the various geological periods ; this study is known as palaeogeography.

Human Geography.

This takes cognizance of the distribu tion of mankind and of human societies in relation to all the conditions of geographical environment, bearing the same re lation to anthropology that biogeography does to biology. In the view of some writers this is the whole theme of geography which they define as the study of the earth in its relation to man ; other writers look on it only as a division of biogeography and they would define it as the ecology of the human species. The view taken in this article is that just as the phenomena of life require biogeography to be considered not as part of physical geography but as superimposed upon it, so the phenomena of mind require that human geography be regarded, not as a part of biogeography, but as superimposed upon it as a higher storey of the great struc ture of geography the foundations of which are physical and mathematical. Friedrich Ratzel developed the subject in his A.nthropogeographie which has long been the standard presenta tion. His students have applied the principles he laid down to elucidate many detailed problems. Those who have made original contributions of this kind in English include Ellen Churchill Semple, Mark. Jefferson, Ellsworth Huntington and J. Russell Smith in America and Marion I. Newbigin, Half ord Mackinder and H. J. Fleure in Great Britain. In France the subject has been handled in a slightly different orientation by Vidal de la Blache and with great fullness, charm and clarity by Jean Brunhes whose Geographie Humaine has been translated into English by Isaiah Bowman and R. E. Dodge. All authorities agree in dealing with human geography on the basis of the control ex ercised upon man in his settlements and in his movements by geographical conditions especially the relief of the land, climate and the distribution of plants and animals; but all also recognize the reaction of man on his environment which increases towards completeness with the civilization of the higher races. The study of human geography involves the use of statistics, such as census reports and registration returns of births, marriages and deaths in order to take account of the ever-changing relation of populations to inhabited areas. This specialized study acquired the name of Demography in the middle of the nineteenth century.

Ethnography

considers the different races of mankind and their 'subdivisions with reference to the areas they inhabit, their languages, cultural development and religions.

Political Geography

takes account of the relation of or ganized groups of people to the region they inhabit. In the case of nomadic tribes with no permanent tie to any particular portion of land, political geography hardly exists, but it becomes important as soon as people settle on some position favourable to their needs under the control of chiefs or committees. The smaller units may confederate or coalesce to form larger org,lnizations under more powerful leadership each controlling a larger area recognized as a country. As time proceeds countries, once small and possibly separated by vast stretches of empty territory, grow in size until their boundaries meet and they fill the whole continent on which they are situated. Political geography has mainly to do with the boundaries and mode of government of countries.

Historical geography may thus be taken as an introduction to political geography. A typical country is a natural region with fixed boundaries occupied by a homogeneous nation of one race, speaking one language and content to live under one code of laws. In such a country patriotism, which is a product of geographical conditions, and loyalty, which is a racial instinct, are one, and this harmony produces a stable, independent and powerful nation. In many cases contiguous countries differ from each other in race, language and religion; thus conditions favourable to the growth of rivalry and misunderstanding already exist. The efforts of a homogeneous state to extend its boundaries or to protect them from the aggression of a neighbouring state have led to the de velopment of military geography.

Often differences of race and language occur within a country, alien elements being grouped together voluntarily or otherwise under one government ; then diverse loyalties tend to weaken the spirit of patriotism without developing that of international brotherhood. The boundaries are not always natural, coastlines, mountain ranges, watersheds or rivers forming only a part of them, and sometimes these are hard to delimit. Boundaries in un developed countries are often most satisfactory when defined by the meridians and parallels of pure mathematical geography which traverse all physical features with indifference. Most often boun daries are fixed by treaties so as to attempt to take account of historical facts or ethnographical conditions, or it may be to secure a share of certain favourable territories at the cost of dividing people of one race and language between two countries to one of which they are alien. The question of national boundaries is the most difficult part of political geography.

Commercial Geography.

This deals with production, trans port and exchange of useful commodities. J. S. Keltie proposed the name applied geography for this aspect but that name is too wide and should equally include political geography. It rests as largely on economics as political geography does on history. Primitive tribes living in a tropical forest afford the simplest example of what might truly be called economic geography or even human ecology, for depending only on wild fruits and the hunting of animals the savage is in harmony with the rest of nature and the power of environment is complete. As civilization advances man begins to react on his environment, introducing flocks of domestic animals to the grasslands, cultivating the soil in order to replace the native flora by roots and fruit and grain and fibre-plants, digging for minerals, smelting metals, devising tools and machinery. As division of labour extends trade be comes essential, means of transport have to be found, commerce established. The control of physical geography, at first dominant in dictating sites of settlement and lines of communication, gives way with the improvement of processes until cost of production, manufacture and distribution is the final arbiter as to whether raw material shall be brought to the site of power or power to the source of raw material or both to convenient centres for distribu tion. G. G. Chisholm's Commercial Geography is the standard English text book.

Regional Geography.

The attempt made in the f oregoing sections to unravel the various threads interwoven in the fabric of geography is apt to spoil the pattern in the reader's mind unless they are put together again in a concrete synthesis. For this rea son the early teaching of geography should begin not with general principles but with the example of a familiar locality from which the world beyond may be opened out as it was opened to the early explorers, and gradually explained as it was explained by the early theorists who fitted facts together in logical order. The scope and bearing of geography can only be fully grasped by the systematic study of a definite region, a river-basin as taken by T. H. Huxley in the introduction to his Physiography or an island, a mountain group, a country or even a continent. A. J. Herbertson, when professor of geography at Oxford, laid great stress on regional geography and made a successful attempt to divide the world into natural regions of large extent. The degree of detail must be adjusted inversely to the size of the area under review, but the order of treatment and the inter-relation of the different aspects are the same whatever the magnitude of the work. The material for regional studies is enormous but it is doubtful whether it is anywhere complete. The scheme for a regional survey of the British Isles on the basis of the Ordnance Survey map of 1 inch to the mile (H. R. Mill in Geographical Journal 7 [1896], 345 and ['goo] 205, 353) proposed the map-sheet as the unit for the preliminary description which should take account also of the Geological Survey maps on the same scale, the hydrographic charts of the coast, the unmapped data of the Meteorological Office, the Census Reports, the Statistics of the Ministry of Agri culture, the Ministry of Health and the Board of Trade. When these official sources were dealt with new surveys would be re quired to take account of plant associations in uncultivated dis tricts, of native fauna, of local industries and customs and much besides. It was proposed to generalise the sheet-descriptions in groups of natural regions and finally to digest the whole into a treatise on the geography of the British Isles. The project re mains a fragment. On a grander scale the American Geographical Society under the guidance of Isaiah Bowman has undertaken a regional study of Latin America of which a stimulating instalment on the Central Andes by A. G. Ogilvie appeared in 1922. The regional idea has been fruitful in developing the most recent geo graphical research in all parts of the world, especially in France and in Germany where the work of Gustav Braun on the Baltic lands and that of Fritz Machatschek on the Sudetic region are models of their kind, while A. Hettner's treatment of the conti nents in his Liinderkunde is a perfect application of the regional idea to the largest areas.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.-E. H. Berger, Geschichte der wis. Erdkunde der Bibliography.-E. H. Berger, Geschichte der wis. Erdkunde der Griechen, Leipzig (1903) ; C. Muller, Geographi Graeci Minores Paris (i86r) ; E. H. Bunbury, History of Ancient Geography (1879) ; H. F. Tozer, History of Geography (1897) ; C. R. Beazley, Dawn of Modern Geography (1906) ; H. Wagner, Lehrbuch der Geographie (1 goo) ; S. Gunther, Handbuch der Mathematischer Geo graphie. Stuttgart (189o) ; A. R. Hinks, Maps and Surveys (1923) ; J. F. Hayford, The Figure of the Earth (1919) ; H. Jeffreys, The Earth, its origin, history and physical constitution (1924) ; E. de Martonne, Traite de geographie physique (1926). (Abridged English translation, 1926) ; W. M. Davis, Physical Geography, Boston (1899) ; H. R. Mill, The Realm of Nature (1924) ; A. Penck, Morphologie der Erdoberfldche, Stuttgart (1928) ; E. Suess, Das Antlitz der Erde, Leipzig (1901) ; English translation, The Face of the Earth (1906) ; P. Soulier, Relief de la Terre (1925) ; G. de la Noe and E. de Margerie, Les Formes du Terrain (1888) ; J. Joly, The Surface History of the Earth (1925) ; R. A. Daly, Our Mobile Earth (1926) ; J. E. Marr, The Scientific Study of Scenery (1900) ; A. R. Wallace, Geo graphical Distribution of Animals (1876) and Island Life (1892) ; O. Drude, Handbuch der Pflanzengeographie (1906) ; M. E. Hardy, The Geography of Plants (1925) ; P. L. Sclater, The Geography of Mammals (1899) ; F. E. Beddard, Zoogeography (1895) ; F. Ratzel, Anthropogeographie, Leipzig (1891) ; F. Ratzel, Politische Geographie, Leipzig (1897) ; P. Vidal de la Blache, Les principes de geographie humaine (192 2) ; E. C. Semple, American History and its geographic conditions, Boston (r 903) ; E. Huntington and S. W. Cushing, Prin ciples of Human Geography (1924) ; G. G. Chisholm, Handbook of Commercial Geography (1923) ; Finch and Baker, Atlas of the World's Agriculture, Washington (U.S. Dept. of Agriculture) (1918) ; U.S. Geological Survey, World Atlas of Commercial Geology, Washington (192I) ; A. Hettner, Grundzuge der Ldnderkunde, Leipzig (1923) ; S. Passarge, Die Grundlagen der Landschaftenkunde (192o).

The most important periodicals devoted to geographical sciences are:—The Geographical Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, London ; The Geographical Review of the American Geographical Society, New York ; La Geographie of the Societe de Geographie of Paris ; the Zeitschrift of the Gesellschaft fiir Erdkunde of Berlin and Petermanns Mitteilungen published in Gotha. (H. R. MI.)