This book sets out one of the parts of the course of general geography, which for a number of years was read by the author at the university. The name of general geography in our universities means the totality of information necessary for a geographer and relating partly to descriptive astronomy, partly to physical geography (meteorology, hydrology, geomorphology), partly to general country studies (climatology, geography of plants, animals, humans). The foundations of all these sciences, which in their totality cannot constitute one special discipline, are better called an introduction to geography.