AGE OF DISCOVERY

Taranaki Daily News, 6 October 1928, Page 7

AGE OF DISCOVERY

THE END NOT YET REACHEID. In his inaugural address, General Nicola Vaechelii, president of the International Geographical Union, speaking at Cambridge recently, said: “We must not think that the period of explorations and discoveries is finished. The Arctic and Antarctic require further methodical exploration, and need new martyrs. The centre of Asia and equatorial Africa yet have to give the world their resources. The atmosphere, now a new route of communication, needs new investigations and further studies, but tho most important thing to-day for the economist, the politician, and the business man is a complete cartographio knowledge - f the known world, the explanatory illustration of the territories within reach of human expansion, and the comparative study of partially known regions. “Nowadays an extensive knowledge of the earth is no longer suficient. Man needs also an intensive knowledge of it. Modern technique has placed at man's disposal the swiftest means of communication. Great distances to-day can be covered in a short time. If to this consideration we add the fact that the world’s population is rapidly increasing and needs new resources we see how clearly paved is the way to geographical studies which have to assume—and are, indeed, assuming—particular ethnical characteristics, as well as political and economic onea”