Perhaps it will be best to treat the two subjects separately, though like all the child’s curriculum at this stage they are inextricably confused and mingled both with each other, and with literature, as experiences of man’s life and conduct.

The beginnings of geography lie in the child’s foundations of experience.  Probably the first real contact, unconscious though it may be, that any child has in this connection is through the production of food and clothing.  A country child sees some of the beginnings of both, but it is doubtful how much of it is really interpreted by him; the village shop with its inexhaustible stores probably means much more in the way of origins, and he may never go behind its contents in his speculations.  It is true he sees milking, harvesting, sheep-shearing, and many other operations, but he often misses the stage between the actual beginning and the finished product—­between the wool on the sheep’s back and his Sunday clothes, between the wheat in the field and his loaf of bread.  The town child has many links if he can use them:  the goods train, the docks, the grocer’s, green-grocer’s or draper’s shop, foreigners in the street, the vans that come through the silent streets in the early morning; in big towns, such markets as Covent Garden or Leadenhall or Smithfield; such a river as the Thames, Humber or Mersey—­from any one of these beginnings he can reach out from his own small environment to the world.  A town child has very confused notions of what a farm really means to national life, and a country child of what a big railway station or dock involves.  All children need to know what other parts of their own land look like, and what is produced; they ought to trace the products within reach to their origin, and this will involve descriptions of such things as fisheries at Hull or Aberdeen, the coal mines of Wales or Lanarkshire, pottery districts of Stafford, woollen and cotton factories of Yorkshire and Lancashire, mills driven by steam, wind and water, lighthouses, the sheep-rearing districts of Cumberland and Midlothian, the flax-growing of northern Ireland, and much else, and the means of transit and communication between all these.  The children will gradually realise that many of the things they are familiar with, such as tea, oranges, silk and sugar, have not been accounted for, and this will take them to the lives of people in other countries, the means of getting there, the time taken and mode of travelling.  They will also come to see that we do not produce enough of the things that are possible to grow, such as wheat, apples, wool and many other common necessaries, and that we can spare much that is manufactured to countries that do not make them, such as boots, clothes, china and cutlery.  There will come a time when the need for a map is apparent:  that is the time to branch off from the main theme and make one; it will have to be of the very immediate surroundings first, but it is not difficult to make the leap soon to countries beyond.  Previous to the need for it, map-making is useless.