not only for the light they threw on their topography, but also, and mainly, for their classical researches into glaciation. For a knowledge of the scientific aspect of the great Alpine groups John Ball did much. Forbes's researches on the glaciers of Norway, though not so extensive as in the case of Switzerland, were not of less scientific value. Murchison's investigations of

BREADFRUIT TREE, KI ISLAND, THE MOLUCCAS.

(By permission, from a photograph supplied by the "Challenger" Office, Edinburgh.)

the Ural Chain, and Murchison, Lyell, and Sedgwick's journeys in the volcanic region of Auvergne (p. 80), while mainly for geological purposes, yielded valuable results in physical geography; so have Lyell's investigations of the volcanic region of Sicily and of the coasts of Denmark. Some topographical work has been carried out in Greece and the Balkan Peninsula, both by private travellers and through the Hellenic Society.

The Ordnance Survey of the British Islands, initiated about the beginning of the century, was nearly completed by 1885. The Royal Geographical Society was founded in 1830, and during the period did much to promote exploration all over the world and to raise the standard of geography at home.

Deep-sea research (oceanography) may be said to have been The Ocean initiated during the period under review, and to have culminated Depths. in the voyage of the Challenger, equipped by the British Government, which under Captain (now Admiral Sir George) Nares and the late Captain F. T. Thomson, from 1873 to 1876, ex

tended research over the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and added largely to our knowledge of the physical geography of the sea.

Britain.

WHEN Englishmen from the mother country visit the colonies Greater and learn to appreciate the wealth and the prosperity of Greater Britain, they find it hard to realise that nearly all this vast and apparently stable empire has virtually been created within the last hundred years. When, to avenge the loss of Canada, France aided the American colonists to throw off the yoke of

Growth of the Empire.

George III., England as a colonial power sank low among
the five European nations who strove for dominion beyond
the seas.
The Dutch had great possessions in Asia, at the
Cape of Good Hope, and in South America; the Spaniards and
the Portuguese held Mexico, Central America, and, with the
exception of the country now known as Guiana, all South
America also; the French owned Mauritius and many of the
West Indies. The nucleus of colonies left to England, and
on which she built up her second empire, consisted only of
Gibraltar, Canada (at that time virtually bounded on the
west by the Great Lakes), Jamaica, Barbadoes, and a few of
the smaller West Indian islands, St. Helena, and some trading
stations on the west coast of Africa.1

From these small beginnings has grown a world-wide empire; and now the larger half of North America, the whole of Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand, vast territories in the south, the east, and the west of Africa, British Guiana, the Malay peninsula, innumerable islands, and priceless fortresses which command the highways of commerce, own allegiance to the British Crown. To describe in detail the various methods by which this extraordinary expansion has been effected would be here impossible, for the history of many of the colonies cannot be dissevered from that of our foreign policy. England emerged empty-handed from very few of the long series of wars which ended at Waterloo. Before the fall of Napoleon most, if not all, of the over-sea possessions of France and her allies had surrendered to our flag. At the Peace many were restored to their original owners, but Ceylon, Mauritius, Cape Colony, Trinidad, and Guiana were then permanently added to the British dominions. On the other hand, most of the great countries which are now known as the self-governing colonies were founded and developed by the restless energy of the AngloSaxon race. Thus in Ontario, the first province of British North America settled after the United States obtained their independence, the pioneers were Englishmen and Scots from the revolted colonies. These men, known in Canadian history as the "United Empire Loyalists," refused to throw in their lot with the young Republic, and, following the old flag into

[1 India does not come within the scope of this section.]

Canada, became backwoodsmen in Ontario. With indomitable energy, and strengthened by a considerable immigration from Scotland, they slowly and painfully converted their forest wilderness into the "garden of Canada"; and their descendants have been the pioneers of the army of emigrants from Britain, who have now begun to people the prairies of Manitoba and the North-West, and, tunnelling through the Rocky Mountains, have joined hands with their fellow-Britons on the shores of the Pacific Ocean. Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand have been entirely settled by emigrants from the mother country; and though many of the original settlers in Tasmania, New South Wales, and Western Australia were of undesirable material, hundreds of thousands of active, energetic English emigrants have now not only completely obliterated the conviet taint, but have built up a second England in the Southern ocean. In South Africa, too, there has been a considerable influx of population from Great Britain. Besides these great colonies, which claim a nationality of their own though not independence, there are a number which possess representative government, the Crown retaining a veto on legislation; a number of Crown Colonies, governed by British officials (the British and native population, however, enjoying varying degrees of representation); and of Protectorates, which retain their native governments under British supervision. The two last classes, like the Indian Empire, have developed in Britons a capacity for governing uncivilised races hitherto unparalleled in history.1

Sentiment.

It is difficult for this generation to believe that the pride Growth of and interest with which the mother country now regards the Imperial self-governing groups of colonies is quite of recent growth; harder still to realise that in the middle of the century British statesmen contemplated, and even sometimes hoped for, separation. Happily for England, although the Australians and Canadians were deeply wounded by this attitude of the Colonial Office, always unsympathetic and often insolent, they refused to take the hint and cut the painter"; and thus by their pride of race, their common-sense, and their sturdy

[The colonial activity of foreign states, revived about the close of the period covered by this work, has caused a renewal of the "expansion of England" which lies beyond our scope here.]

patriotism, they preserved the British Empire from dismemberment. The English public were at that time so ignorant. in all concerning the colonies that they were indifferent as to the continuance of the connection. They were unable to distinguish between the nationality of the inhabitants of British North America and the United States, and, to the intense disgust of the Canadians, used to speak of them as Yankees; while even the Colonial Office was known to address despatches to "Melbourne, South Australia, New South Wales," which in Europe would be equivalent to sending a letter to "Lisbon, Spain, France." But this is now a thing of the past; and British indifference to the fortunes of the colonies has given place, from about 1875 onwards, to keen pride in the Empire. An Imperial Federation League was founded in that year, under the auspices of statesmen of both political parties; the conferences of colonial statesmen in London at the Jubilees of the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1887 and 1897 have drawn the great self-governing colonies closer to the mother country, and opened up at least the possibility of a customs union; the aid given by Canadian voyageurs and New South Wales cavalry in 1885 to the mother country in the Soudan prepared the way for the more extensive and more needful support accorded to her by both Canada and Australia during the South African War in 18991902, and for the assumption by them of part of the burden of Imperial defence. The Canadian colonies were federated in 1867, the Australian in 1900, the South African will follow in good time. The practical experiments of the Australian colonies and of New Zealand in state ownership of railways, in the simplification of the transfer of land, in the extension of the suffrage to women, in old age pension schemes, in payment of members, in laicising the State by disestablishment and

[In some degree, moreover, the Imperial connection was strengthened towards the end of our period by the change in the system of appointing Colonial Governors which began with the despatch of the Marquis of Lorne to Canada in 1878. Formerly they constituted almost a special profession, not unlike the provincial Governors of the Roman Empire. Now, at least in the great selfgoverning Colonies, they are men of high social and political position in England. Naturally they tend to carry more weight in the Colonies, and their experience on their return commands more attention from the British public than those of their more specialised but less eminent predecessors.]