Use of a globe.

I will add some miscellaneous suggestions about geographical teaching:

Take care to have a globe always at hand to correct the erroneous impressions which are always produced by flat maps, because they are plane representations of parts of a spherical surface, and because they are almost necessarily on very different scales. A map of England hangs by the side of one representing Europe, and is generally quite as large, and there is no way of rectifying the impression except by shewing the position and relative sizes of both on the globe. The old globes in stands are far less useful than portable globes. I need hardly say that a celestial globe is utterly misleading. Use the globe also to shew how the sun comes on to the meridian of different places in succession at different times; and from the fact that the earth revolves round its axis in 24 hours, deduce a rough general rule for determining the times at different places, according to the number of degrees of longitude. For example you point out that in our Lat., 51 N., the value of a degree of longitude is to that of a degree of longitude on the great circle of the equator as 37 to 60. Say approximately then that as the great circle as well as all the parallels of latitude are divided into 360 degrees, and as the earth revolves in 24 hours, 15 degrees on any parallel represent an hour's difference of time; but 15° on the equator mean 24 of a circumference of 24000 miles: hence on the equator 1000 miles E. or W. represent a difference of one hour in time. But in our latitude we may reckon that about 600 miles E. or W. represent an hour; and that thus a telegram from Constantinople which is about 30 degrees to our E. or about 1200 miles, and which has the sun on its meridian two hours before us, may be delivered in London apparently at an

earlier hour than that at which it is transmitted. At this moment, e. g. it is 2 o'clock here, it is 4 at Constantinople, and it is quite conceivable that a message transmitted thence and dated 4 p. m. might reach us by 3.

Call attention in every case to the scale of a map, Judging distances. and give exercises in judging approximate distances. Shew e. g. in a map of England what number of miles is represented by the length and breadth of the sheet respectively, and lead the scholars to exercise themselves in determining the approximate distances between towns or other places. In fashioning for yourself a map, such as has been described, of the parish or district in which the school is situated, seek to enlist the services of the children themselves; and invite them to suggest other objects or places, and when they make a copy of it, require each scholar to put into position and to mark specially the site of neighbouring buildings, as well as of the school, and their proper distances.

Maps.

Do not rely wholly on maps with names printed on The use of them. The habit of setting children to look vaguely for a place on the map, which merely means looking for a certain printed word, is very useless. Nothing is learned of the true position of countries by this means. The best maps are outline maps on a large scale without names; and best of all those which are drawn in outline by the teacher himself on a black board, and filled in item by item, as each new fact is elicited by questions or descriptions. And do not forget that the knowledge of the mere names and positions of places is worth little or nothing. unless the scholar has some interesting associations with them. If you are asked to learn the name and position of a place per se, the memory refuses and rightly refuses to retain it, because it has no organic connexion with anything else you know or wish to know. The best know

F. L.

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ledge of mere topography is gained incidentally, in connexion with reading lessons, with lessons on history or familiar objects, with the tracing of imaginary voyages and travels. The map should be always at hand, and when referred to in order to identify a place, of which you are learning something else than its mere geographical position, is seen to serve a useful purpose and helps to impress a fact on the memory. Indeed every time a map is referred to for such a purpose, something is done to impress geographical facts on the eye. And this itselt

is a useful lesson.

The earth

Physical Connect from the first Physical geography with that Geography which is called Political. By the former of course is meant the geography of the world as it would have been if man had never lived on it; by the latter, is meant all those facts which are the result of man's residence on the earth. But the second class of facts is nearly always to be accounted for by a study of the first. is wonderfully designed for human habitation. It is our granary, our vineyard, our lordly pleasure-house. In some parts nature is bountiful, in others penurious; over some she sheds beauty, in others she offers material prosperity at one place she hides treasure, at another she spreads it on the surface. In some places she invites neighbouring peoples to intercourse, in others she erects impenetrable barriers between them: in some she lures the inhabitants to peaceful prosaic industry, in others terrifies them by displays of awful and inexplicable forces. And even of those regions which she seems not to have designed for our use-the torrid desert, the lonely rocky mountains, and the mysterious ice-bound regions of the poles, may we not truly say, that they too are part of the bountiful provision she has made for our many-sided wants? For they impress and exalt our imagination, they

minister to our sense of beauty; and yet at the same time they humble our pride, and make us feel that there is something more in the world than is immediately and easily intelligible to us. They give us in short a sense of the mystery, the vastness and the sumptuousness of the world, which is very necessary for a right estimate of our own true place in it.

national

And with such considerations before us we see how Its incuriously the mere physical conditions in which man is fluence on placed determine his habits, the life he leads, the kind of character. societies he forms, the character and the history of differ

ent races.

You think of our own fair island-'this precious stone set in the silver sea'—you turn the globe into the position in which England is at the top and in the centre, and you see how advantageously she is placed, in the middle of the hemisphere of land, near enough to partake of all the advantages of Western Europe, but far enough off to encourage in her people the sense of independence with her extensive coasts, her excellent harbours, her hardy yet temperate climate—a climate of which Charles II. said that it allowed men to go about their work with less interruption and on a greater number of days than in any other country in the world; and you cannot dissociate the thought of our insular position, our climate and resources, from the character and history of our people. Take Holland as another example. It is low, fiat, moist; hence suited for pasture rather than tillage; hence favourable for the rearing of cattle, for butter and for cheese; and because so low that the encroachments of the sea can only be prevented by enormous and costly dykes, and by incessant watchfulness, its inhabitants are distinguished by foresight and endurance, by thrift and industry; and because for these reasons the scenery is flat, dull and uninspiring, the in

Illustra

conditions

on national

history.

habitants are not distinguished by the wealth of their imagination or the splendour of their literature.

Look again at the vast alluvial plains watered by the tions of the Nile, the Euphrates, the Indus and the Yellow River. effect of physical The soil is rich, the wants of the people few, the inducement to exertion small. There you have found in all ages of the world a teeming population, agricultural and stationary, attached to the soil, conservative in habits of thought, easily subjugated and kept in subjection; and there have been appropriately placed the great despotic monarchies. On the other hand look at small maritime states like ancient Phoenicia, Greece and Italy, separated by ridges of hills, inhabited by little communities, isolated, yet compelled sometimes to fight for their liberty; hence jealous of each other, and hence self-asserting, their history full of records of intestine divisions, and of heroic struggles for liberty. Here you cannot fail to see a connexion between the free vigorous life of early Rome and of the Etruscan and Greek republics, and the physical conditions under which the people lived.

Or contrast with the great communities which have formed the Egyptian, the Assyrian, and the Chinese Empires, the state of the people on the Great Tartar steppes where herbage is scanty, where a settled habitation is almost impossible, and where nomadic, and therefore restless, wild, suspicious and warlike races find an appropriate home. In like manner you may trace the influence of climate in some countries by the way in which it enervates the labourer, and in others by the way in which it impels him to exertion and calls out his higher qualities. You may even see how the aspects of nature affect the national character in many places: for where physical phenomena are equable and uniform as in temperate climates, and man has learned how to