SCHOOL GEOGRAPHY.

BY

JAMES CLYDE, LL.D.

AUTHOR OF "GREEK SYNTAX, WITH A RATIONALE OF THE CONSTRUCTIONS,"

ETC. ETC.

EDINBURGH: THOMAS CONSTABLE AND CO.

HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO., LONDON.

PREFACE.

WHEN the author of the present volume had occasion to teach Geography to an advanced class many years ago, he was unable to find, among the many manuals competing for public favour, one that carried out his views on the subject. Accordingly, instead of using a manual at all, he taught the class by means of familiar lectures, dividing each hour between a fresh lecture and an examination on the one preceding. The notes of these lectures form the basis of the present work.

In

The older manuals of Geography were meagre, little else, in fact, than classified reprints of the letterpress of maps. The more recent are full of matter; but the facts, instead of being grouped so as to suggest their mutual bearings and express a unity, are for the most part detached, as in a year-book. composing the present work, the author's object has been, not to dissect the several countries of the world, and then label their dead limbs, but to depict each country, as made by God and modified by man, so that the relations between the country and its inhabitants, in other words, the present geographical life of the country, may plainly appear.

To secure the adaptation of the book to school purposes, the author has applied two tests to all he has written. The first

Is this matter examinable ?-detects vague generality, as when the climate of a country is merely said to be beautiful. The second-Is this matter rememberable ?-forbids the accumulation of details beyond the power of the human memory to retain them. The second of these tests may not, like the first, be enforced with rigour. Although to teach what has no fair chance of being remembered is worse than useless, it does not follow that the amount of matter in a school-book should be determined by the maximum retentive power of the memory. One boy remembers a class of facts which another forgets; and as, in order to avoid vagueness, details must be mentioned, these are sure to accumulate till, however memorable in themselves, the mass of them ceases to be rememberable. Even with these modifications, however, the application of the second test has excluded from this volume an immense amount of detail, chiefly statistical, which, though common in manuals of Geography, finds its appropriate place only in books of reference.

With regard to the details admitted, the author believes that the remark made in Note 1, p. 175, regarding the departments of France, may be profitably extended according to the discretion of teachers. In more instances than that, details have been introduced into this work, not because the author would teach them to a class of his own, but because the great majority of teachers still think them indispensable.

The more important countries have been treated of in three parts, so as to render the course of study threefold in regard to them. The first part, printed in large type, contains that general information about the geography of a country, by means of which alone details can be properly allocated and interpreted. A few

questions have been added to this part, not for the purpose of enabling the student to examine himself on the letterpress, or of guiding the teacher in the examination of his class on the map, but merely to test and secure such an acquaintance with the map as it is both possible and desirable to retain throughout life,1 The second part consists of topographical details, and the third of supplementary matter, i.e., of matter only indirectly geographical. The whole contents of the first and third parts belong to the permanent stock of every well-educated person's geographical knowledge. No one can be expected to retain permanently all the topographical details; but he who acquires the greatest mastery over them at school, is likely to retain the largest share of them in after life.

The lists of political divisions and natural features, which precede the description of each country, are intended specially for the guidance of those whose maps contain many more names than are wanted for school purposes. The natural features have been arranged very nearly as they stand in the map, in order that their relative position may be impressed on the pupil's mind whenever he refers to the lists. By the classification of towns and remarkable places according to the river-basins and coastlines, with which the topographical details conclude, provision is made for a twofold examination, one bringing out the political, and another the natural relations, of each place.

1 It is necessary to mention here that through a misapprehension on the part of the superintendent of the press, the questions are more numerous than is consistent with the author's object as explained above. Those who appreciate that object are recommended to attend, in the map of Ireland (p. 95), only to Nos. 1-13; in that of Prussia (p. 137), only to Nos. 1-7; in that of Denmark (p. 143), only to Nos. 7-10; in that of Austria (p. 169), only to Nos. 9-16, and 21-25; in that of France (p. 184), only to Nos. 1-15; and in that of the Iberian Peninsula (p. 198), only to Nos. 1-9, and 25-28.