Geography was taught at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, from the days when the College first opened its doors in 1872 – that is, forty-six years before a University Department providing first degree courses with Honours in the subject was established in 1918. All that was given were lectures similar in content to ‘the use of the globe’, a recital of the names of the chief mountains, the capes and bays and principal rivers, followed by the largest towns of a selected country, and ending with the imports and exports of the country concerned. This represented little more than the content of the geography syllabus found in any primary school in Britain in Victorian times. The lecturers who dealt with the subject had little or no geographical background and took on the task of instruction as a mere ‘odd job’ imposed upon them by the Principal. Many of them, however, were well qualified in their own special fields to give lectures on geography, as, for example, the first member of staff, Reverend W. Hoskins Abrall. He was a Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, and became the first Professor of Classics at Aberystwyth, retaining at the same time his post as vicar of a Herefordshire parish. There were some, however, who gave lectures in geography and geology in the early days who had a wider background as, for example, Leonard Lyell, nephew of the distinguished geologist, Sir Charles Lyell.