For many years Harvard's work in geography has been scattered through various departments of the university. Economic geography has its due share of attention at the school of business administration. The geographical distribution of plants is covered in the department of botany. The climatology courses given by Professor Ward are well known. But geography as a science has hardly been accorded the emphasis and prestige which it deserves and has received in the West. The subject since the turn of the century has come forward rapidly in popular estimation and its interrelation; with other sciences are better understood in the world of scholars than ever before.

Now through the gift of Dr. A. Hamilton Rice, well-known as a leader in many expeditions of exploration, and described in the formal announcement modestly as an "amateur of the geographical sciences." Harvard is to give geography its co-ordinate place with the other sciences. Dr. Rice is founding a school of geography, which will have its own building and an equipment complete in every detail. This building will house the most complete file of records of expeditions to every part of the earth to be found anywhere in one place and available for reference and study. The building will mount its own wireless plant so that expeditions in remote lands may be in touch with the home base always. Field work and surveying will be taught on the flat roof, which will be designed for that special use.

The instruction in geography will not immediately be concentrated in this new department, but the work will be unified. The facilities in the plant will be accessible to all classes in the university and access to the large library and the huge collection of maps will be allowed to all students. Under graduates and post-graduates may take courses in the department. Dr. Rice is especially interested in expeditions, and has himself headed seven exploring parties in tropical South America, with results which have earned for him the recognition of learned societies in many lands. He feels that the average expedition even of the last thirty years has been sent out by schools and other agencies without as thorough equipment as should have been provided. The Harvard school will seek to remedy this defect. Students will be taught, for instance, to make maps of maxim accuracy; they will be trained in the use of wireless for the plotting of their exact positions, and in the skilled use of the new instruments of recent invention.

The plan for this new school is of more than ordinary interest to the general public. Heretofore the work done in geography at Clark University in Worcester has stood by itself in America. With Dr. Rice as founder and first director of the Harvard school and the splendid plant which he is providing for it, there is no reason to doubt the importance of the work it will do.