Welsh Journals

Davies collection is the strong continuity and development in his writing (as befits a man of the Highland Zone) of the formative forces acting upon the new academic subject of geography in Britain in the early decades of the century. Today we look to North America and Scandinavia for our models; Bowen's inheritance was derived from the great 19th century schools of geography in Germany and France. But once absorbed, the product of his work became distinct- ly his, and characteristically Welsh in flavour. What Geography, Culture and Habitat cannot, and does not attempt, to do is represent other aspects of Emrys Bowen's wide gifts to Geography. Foremost and certainly most influential of these is his considerable power and skill as a teacher. He is, like the great Welsh preachers of the 19th century and the tellers of folk tales as far back as the Mabinogi, a superb story teller. And it is this talent that he has applied to the academic lecture, but never at the expenses of its scholarly content. Today we have become accustomed to the use of a wide range of visual aids to lecturing. But those who have watched with admiration Emrys Bowen's use of the simplest of all aids-chalk and blackboard-to structure a lecture, will regard it as much a pedagogic as an academic experience. So large were classes in Aberystwyth in his day, and so widely did he travel to speak to groups, large and small, that the impact of his lectures and infective personality were wide. Many of these lectures were given in schools or to school teachers. The enthusiasm for geography today in 6th forms is at least partly attributable to his efforts. He has been a generalist and a propagandist of the very best kind. In many ways Emrys Bowen is a geographer's geographer. This is not to say that he has not made important contributions to cognate disciplines-to history, archaeology and anthropology-but that his main thrust has always been within his own academic subject. For this he received recognition from his geographical colleagues by being elected President of both the Institute of British Geographers and of the Geographical Association. He was awarded the Murchison Grant of the Royal Geographical Society for his studies of the geography of Wales and became President of Section E (Geography) of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. More recently he has been honoured by the University of Wales, which has bestowed an honorary degree upon him. The period of his career spans the time from when, in the 1920's, geography was struggling to find a place and a rôle in British academic life, to the present, when it is frequently the strongest subject in both Arts and Social Science faculties of universities. A strong commitment to the subject was