GEOGRAPHY AND EAST AFRICA 211
to show that the mimicry of insects was developed as a means of protection. I look back with the greatest pleasure to my long and close association with Mr. Bates in the work of the Royal Geographical Society. His death was a great loss and a great blow to many friends. He and another friend only just dead were exceptionally slow in finding the exact word they wished to use. Yet both of them, in despite of slowness of utterance, succeeded in giving an exact notion of their views in a briefer time than any one else I can think of. Their sentences were a standing lesson to avoid superfluity of words when making explanations.
One new and successful attempt that I set on foot was the intervention of the Royal Geographical Society in geographical education. I began with public schools, having talked the matter well over with W. F. Farrar, then a master at Harrow. He thought the idea quite feasible. Then I had much help from the Hon. G. Brodrick, and encouragement from my brother-in-law, George Butler, then Headmaster of Liverpool College, who shared the belief of Dr. Arnold in the value of geography, if properly taught. That was by no means the general view, which was rather that geography lent itself to cram more easily than any other subject, and that it was hardly possible to set real problems in it, that should compel thought.
The upshot of all was, that the Royal Geographical Society offered an annual gold medal to be competed ' for by boys belonging to a considerable number of invited schools-in fact to all of the public schools properly so called. The examiners for the medal
