each for his own particular purpose, we want the
kind of information I have described above--that is, what usually
goes under the name of Geography. But the point I wish now to urge
is that we shall not have plucked the very flower of geographical
knowledge until in addition to all this we have a knowledge of the
_Beauty_ of the Earth.

Perhaps you will understand me better if I illustrate my point. When
a dressmaker has to make a dress for a lady she has to measure her
with the minutest accuracy. She must gain a knowledge, by careful
measurement, of the exact shape and size of the lady's body, its true
contour, and the length and breadth of the limbs--just as an engineer
must have accurate knowledge of the Earth's surface. And to the
dressmaker _as_ a dressmaker knowledge of the lady's beauty has
no value whatever. The lady may have the beauty of form of a
Venus, but if the dressmaker has only knowledge of that beauty and
has not exact measurements she will never be able to make the dress.
But for humanity at large--and, as far as that goes, for the
dressmaker herself when she is free of her dressmaking--knowledge
of the lady's beauty is the knowledge that really matters. Whether
she is twenty-six inches round the waist or only twenty-five matters
comparatively little.

Now the Earth I regard as a lady--as dear Mother-Earth. A real
living being--live enough, at any rate, to give birth to mankind, to
microscopic animalculae first and through them to man. And no one
can look at the features of Mother-Earth without recognising her
Beauty. It is there staring us in the face. So I cannot conceive why
we geographers should confine ourselves to the dressmaker attitude
of mind and describe every other characteristic of the Earth except
her Beauty. I should have thought that it was the very first thing
with which we should have concerned ourselves--that the first duty
of those who profess and call themselves geographers should have
been to describe the beauty of their Mother-Earth.

Say a visitor from Mars arrived upon the Earth, he would no doubt
report on his return that the mountains here were so many thousands
of feet high and the seas so many thousands of feet deep, and the
area of the land and sea so many thousand square miles; that the
productivity of the land in one quarter had had the effect of
attracting a large part of the population to that quarter, and the
aridity or cold of another portion had had the effect