The origins of Polish geography are to be found in the Renaissance, when a lively intellectual movement developed round the U iversity of Cracow. A number of descriptive works and travel diaries were written, notably the 'Chorographia regni Poloniae, by Jan Dlugosz (1415-80) and the 'De duabus SarmathV by Maciej z Miechowa,1 a description of eastern Europe published in 1517 and for long considered the best source of information on this part of Europe. The first maps were also compiled about the same time; in 1526 the first large-scale map of Poland (about 1 : 1,260,000) was published by Bernard Wapowski. A large number of contributions by sixteenth and seventeenth century Polish geographers and cartographers could be mentioned here.2 In the second half of the seventeenth and first half of the eighteenth centuries Polish science as a whole declined, and it was only in the second half of the eight? eenth century (the Age of Enlightenment) that scientific interests revived. As else? where, a number of enlightened minds laid the foundations of modern science, including geography, and between the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries the names of Stanislaw Staszic, Hugo Kollataj, Jan Sniadecki, Joachim Lelewel and others may be mentioned. The beginnings of economic geo? graphy are to be found in the work of Tadeusz Czacki, Fryderyk Skarbek and others. 3 Among the maps compiled at this time, those by Tadeusz Czacki and K. Perthees are to be distinguished. In the 'thirties of the nineteenth century the first detailed topographical map (1 : 126,000) of the Kingdom of Poland was pro? duced by the Quartermaster-General's office of the Polish Army. Throughout the nineteenth century, Polish geography continued to develop despite the obstacles to scientific progress caused by the division of Poland between the partitioning powers. Patriotism played its part here, promoting a tendency towards the study of the territories which had formed pre-partition Poland. In 1849 tne first university chair of geography in Poland was created in the Jagiellon university of Cracow. For the most part, however, Polish scientists worked abroad: among the best known were the explorers of South America (e.g. I. Domeyko, J. Warszewicz, K. Jelski, J. Sztolcman, J. Siemiradzki), of Australia and Oceania (P. Strzelecki and J. Kubary), of Asia (J. Potocki, J. Czerski, B. Dybowski, B. Gr^bczewski), of Africa (S. Rogozinski) and of the Antarctic regions (H. Arctowski and A. B. Dobrowolski). At the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, the progressive scientist Waclaw Nalkowski was active in Warsaw, and his contribution to Polish geography is only now being fully appreciated. In the last decade of the nineteenth century, the great Polish climatologist, cartographer and geomorphologist Eugeniusz Romer began work at the University of Lwow? work which was to continue for many years. The recovery of independence by Poland in 1918 increased opportunities for the development of geography. Chairs were created in the six Polish universities and centres of scientific research were founded. Yet geographical research during this period was haphazard and in spite of the contributions of such outstanding geo? graphers as Romer, Sawicki, Pawlowski, Smolenski, Lencewicz, Limanowski and Nowakowski little progress was made: in particular, economic geography lagged