When I coom to think of it

 he said as he scratched his head, "the North Eastern Railway passes through it."

But the old geography familiarised you with[Pg 101] the look of the map. Where it failed was in the appeal to the imagination. You learned a lot of facts but you never asked why. I should imagine that the new geography may deal with reasons why; it may enquire into racial differences; it may ask why London is situated where it is, why New York grew so big.

For weeks before I left my school my geography lesson consisted of readings from Foster Fraser's The Real Siberia. I began to feel at home in Siberia, and what had been a large ugly chunk of pink on the map of Asia became a real place. There is a scarcity of books of this kind. Every school should have a book on every country written in Fraser's manner. I don't say that Fraser sees very deeply into the life of the Russian. I am quite content with his delightful stories of wayside stations and dirty peasants. He paints the place as it is; if I want to know what the philosophy of the Russian is I can take up Tolstoy or Dostoeivsky or Maxim Gorki.

To return to isotherms ... well, no, I think I'll get to bed instead.