Page:Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal Vol 1.djvu/369



the events of scientific interest which have recently been announced in India, is the institution in England of a new Society, having for its object the promotion of Geographical Science, and called tbe Royal Geographical Society. Mr. Barrow, the reputed author of many valuable articles in the Quarterly Review, illustrative of the Geography of various parts of the world, and the adviser of those ex- peditions into the Arctic Seas, from the success of whicb in exploring the northern coasts of the American continent, so mucb credit has redounded to the British nation, is the President of this Society ; and certainly, since the death of our own Major Rennell, there is no one whose reputation stands so bigh in this department of science, or whose zeal, acuteness, and rare tact in the discrimination of the value of materials promise more for the success of an association devoted to sucb objects. There has been issued already one number, containing the first fruits of the Society's labours ; and the interesting papers it contains, added to the style of elegance and correctness in which the maps are executed, make us wish anxiously to see the continuation.

There is no branch of science so proper as geography to be taken up by an Association of this kind, because there is none in advancing which pure study and literary research can do so little, and the progress of which depends so much upon the accidental circumstances in which men of various attainments happen to find themselves placed. For nearly all that has been done, and for most that is still doing in geography, by land or by sea, we are indebted to the exertions of practical unpretending individuals, who finding the maps and charts they are using incorrect, or lighting by chance on new objects not laid down, employ a