Published Resources Details
Book
- Title
- Australia: a study of warm environments and their effect on British settlement
- Imprint
- Methuen & Co., London, 1940, 455 pp
- Url
- https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.223927
- Format
- Contains
- Image
- Description
First published 27 June 1940; Second edition revised March 1943; Third edition 1945; online version available from the Internet Archive.
- Abstract
Preface [Third Edition, 1945]
In an address given in London in 1931. I discussed the evolution of ·geographical research in Australia (Scot. Geog. Mag., 1932). I pointed out the debt which Australia owed, primarily to two men, as regards early progress in geography. These leaders in science. Were Professor Sir Edgeworth David and Professor J. W. Gregory. The latter was only in Australia for a few years, but he produced the first modern text on Geography in his Victoria, published in 1903. This was followed by a valuable book entitled Australasia (in Stanford's Compendium) in 1906. This has remained up to the present almost the sole general account of the continent on a large scale, but it was necessarily somewhat like a gazetteer in its treatment. . The present book is an attempt to produce a text for use in High Schools and Universities along modern lines. My chief aims have been to express the data graphically, preferably by isopleths, and as much as possible to suggest causes.
On reading the completed manuscript I feel that I should perhaps apologize for the rather personal approach, - which is more apparent thari is usual in a text of this kind. My excuse is that for some twenty years I was almost the sole professional geographer in the Commonwealth, either as a member of the Commonwealth Weather Service or of the Department of Geography in the University of Sydney. Hence I have been in a very favourable position to see geography develop in a pioneer continent ; and although it is some years since I left Australia I have been giving courses of lectures on that continent each year, and have kept in touch with recent developments.
I have to thank the various Australian Government officials to whom I have applied for information for their uniform courtesy. The Commonwealth Year Book is of course indispensable for the student of Australian Geography. It is not as well known as it should be that an up-to-date bibliography is to be found in each of these Year Books. Rand, McNally & Company of Chicago have kindly allowed me to use several maps from a book of mine which they published. It may not be out of place to state that this elementary book (Australia, 1931) contains about 200 photographs, of a sort which cannot, I think, be so conveniently consulted elsewhere.
The debt which my new book owes to present workers in Australia is considerable. Special mention may be made of the work of Charles Fenner, Grenfell Price and Wynne Williams. It is gratifying to note that their patriotic efforts to ' tell the truth and shame the booster ' are being received with the respect which they merit. In conclusion, I have to thank my assistant, Miss Brookstone, B.A., for kindly reading the manuscript.
GRIFFITH TAYLOR,
University of Toronto
Related entries
People
- Andrews, Ernest Clayton (1870 - 1948)
- Banks, Joseph (1743 - 1820)
- Blaxland, Gregory (1778 - 1853)
- David, Tannatt William Edgeworth (1858 - 1934)
- Dawes, William (1762 - 1836)
- Eyre, Edward John (1815 - 1901)
- Fenner, Charles Albert Edward (1884 - 1955)
- Flinders, Matthew (1774 - 1814)
- Gregory, John Walter (1864 - 1932)
- Price, Archibald Grenfell (1892 - 1977)
- Taylor, Thomas Griffith (1880 - 1963)
- Wadham, Samuel MacMahon (1891 - 1972)