Abstract
IN looking to the future, it is important to inquire how I the society will be able to maintain its reputation and its usefulness in the new conditions of geographical knowledge. It is true that the South Pole is as yet uncaptured, that the map of Arabia is still largely composed of great blank spaces, and that the bend of the Brahmaputra is drawn by guesswork in our atlases. But all these problems will, it is probable, be solved before long, and where then will be the field in which the explorer may hope to win renown by robbing the unknown of its romance? We must sooner or later face the fact that the work by which this society has become best known in the past represents an almost finished chapter in geographical history, and we should sometimes, in preparation for the future, ask ourselves what ought to be our rdle when the last leaf in that chapter has actually been turned.
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The Work of the Royal Geographical Society 1 . Nature 86, 429–430 (1911). https://doi.org/10.1038/086429a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/086429a0