ing in awful relief, our relation to the Great grave. Luc Being that ordained them, we are summon- over the ocean picture, thus placid and seVOL. XIV. No IV. 28 Physical Geography. BY MARY SOMERVILLE. Authoress of the "Connexion of the Physical Sciences," &c. With a portrait. 2 vols. foolscap 8vo. London, 1848. EARTH-OCEAN-AIR-With what events, | ed to their study by the double motive of moral and physical-with what sympathies, a temporal and spiritual interest, and of an social and domestic-with what interests, inborn and rational curiosity. present and future, are these magic words When we stand before the magnificent indissolubly associated! When we view, landscape of hill and dale, of glade and foas from afar, our terrestrial ball, wheeling rest, of rill and cataract with its rich foreits course round the central sun, and per-ground at our feet, and its distant horizon forming with unerring precision, its daily on the deep, or on the mountain range tipped circuit, we see it but as a single planet of with ice, or with fire, the mind reverts to the system--we admire the grandeur of the that primæval epoch, when the everlasting terraqueous mass, and the mind, in its ex- hills were upheaved from the ocean, when panding survey, is soon lost in the abyss of the crust of the earth was laid down and space, and among the infinities, in number hardened, when its waters were enchanneland in magnitude, of revolving worlds. ed in its riven pavement, when its breast But, occupying as we do, a fixed place upon was smoothed and chiselled by the diluvian its surface-treading its verdant plains-wave, and when its burning entrails burst surveying its purple-lighted hills-gazing from their prison-house, and disclosed the upon its interminable expanse of waters, fiery secrets of their birth. and looking upward to the blue ether which When we turn to the peaceful ocean, excanopies the whole, the imagination quits panding its glassy mirror to the sun, embothe contemplation of the universe, and pon- soming in its dove-like breast the blue vault ders over the mysterious realities around. above, and holding peaceful communion The chaos, the creation, the deluge, the with its verdant, or its rocky shores, the earthquake, the volcano, and the thunder- mind is carried back to that early period bolt, press themselves upon our thoughts, when darkness was over the face of the deep and while they mark the physical history when the waters were gathered into the of the past, they foreshadow the dreaded hollow of the land-and when the brokenconvulsions of the future. Associated with up fountains of the deep consigned the whole our daily interests and fears, and emblazon- earth, with its living occupants, to a watery ing in awful relief, our relation to the Great grave. But while we thus linger in thought Being that ordained them, we are summon- over the ocean picture, thus placid and seVOL. XIV. No IV. 28 rene, we are reminded of the mighty influ- [ forewarns us of the breeze that moves it; ences which it obeys. Dragged over its co- the mighty tempest supervenes, cutting ral bed by an agency unseen, and stirred to down its battalions of vegetable life, whirlits depths by the raging tempest, the god-ing into the air the dwellings and the dedess of peace is transformed into a Fury-fences of man, and dashing the proudest of lashing the very heavens with its breakers his war-ships against the ocean cliffs, or -bursting the adamantine barriers which sinking them beneath the ocean waves. confine it-sweeping away the strongholds When thus awakened from her peaceful of man, and engulphing in its waves the trance, nature often summons to the conmightiest of his floating bulwarks. flict her fiercest powers of destruction. The But it is in the pure atmosphere which we electric agents-those ministers of fire, breathe, and within the ethereal envelope which rule so peacefully when resting in of our globe, that the most remarkable revo- equilibrium, and which play so gently in the lutions must have been effected; and it is summer lightning-sheet, or so gaily in the in this region, also, that nature presents us, auroral beams-frequently break loose from in our own day, with the most fearful con- their bonds, to frighten and destroy. When trasts with the most peaceful repose of the the heat of summer has drawn up into the elements, and the most terrific exhibition atmosphere an excess of moisture, and of their power. The primeval transition charged the swollen clouds with conflicting from the chaos of the atmosphere to a pure electricities, the dissevered elements rush and cloudless sky, must have been the result into violent re-union, and compress in their of frequent and convulsive actions. The fiery embrace the vaporous mass which they exhalations from the green and fermenting animate. Torrents of rain, and cataracts earth-the gaseous currents from its heat- of hail, emerge from the explosion, and ed crust, the empoisoned miasmata from its even stony and metallic meteors rush in licrevices and pores, and the watery vapors quid fire from the scene. The forked lightfrom putrid lake and troubled sea, must have ning-bolt flies with death on its wing, rendformed an insalubrious compound, which it ing the oak-trunk with its wedge of fire, required the electric stroke to purify and and transfixing with its lurid dagger the decompose. While there was yet no light stalwart frame of man and of beast; and on the earth, and the sun and moon were before life is extinct, the thunder-clap rolls, veiled with thick darkness, the "waters in funereal echo, from cloud to cloud, and above the firmament" must have descended from hill to hill, as if a shout were pealed in torrents-the hailstorm must have rush-from the cloud of witnesses, in mockery of ed from the upper air, and the tempest, and the helplessness of man, and in triumph over the lightning, and the thunderbolt, must his fall. have combined their tremendous energies, before the rebellious elements were insulated and subdued. In now contemplating the aerial granary which so peacefully surrounds and sustains us, we could scarcely anticipate the character and extent of its abnormal phases. The same powers which were needed for its original distillation, seem to be required to maintain it salubrious and pure; and though these powers are in daily operation near us and around us, we know them only as destroying agents, and take little interest in the wonderful arrangements which they subserve. When on a Sabbath morn the sounds of busy life are hushed, and all nature seems recumbent in sleep, how deathlike is the repose of the elements-yet how brief and ephemeral is its duration ! The zephyr whispers its gentle breathings; the aspen leaf tries to twitter on its stalk; the pulse of the distant waterfall beats with its recurring sound; the howl of the distant forest A subject embracing topics like these, connected with the past history and the present condition of our globe, must necessarily possess an exciting interest; and it is strange that, in our language, no separate work has appeared, in which the grand truths of physical geography are illustrated and explained. From our youth we have been accustomed to look at the earth, or its delineations, as mapped into regions, from which the great boundaries of nature are effaced. Empires purchased by blood, and held by force, are, in the political geography with which we are familiar, bounded by chains of custom-houses and barriers of forts. Ambition has replaced the sea-line, and the river, and the mountain range, with frowning battlements, cordons of troops and rapacious agents-parcelling out the earth into unnatural divisions-forcing its population into jarring communities-severing the ties of language and religion-breaking up into hostile principalities the fatherlands of united hearts—extirpating even the na- | interruption, the grassy savannah, the heathtive possessors of the soil, and thus treating covered mountain, and the barren desert. intellectual and immortal man as if he were He encounters no spot where the human but the property and the tool of the tyrant. worm claims the perennial right of pursuing Thus founded on the severance of nature's its slimy course. He discovers no land unbonds, thus sustained by the suspended der the canopy of heaven where man may sword, thus outlined in blood still crying not carve a niche for his idol, or rear a temfor vengeance, the geography of conquest, ple to his God. like the quicksands of the ocean, is ever shifting its frontier, ever subject to the inroads of avarice and ambition. Taught us in our youth, taught anew in our manhood, and requiring to be taught again in our old age, it is ever associated with gigantic crime-nationally, with bloody revolutions and desolating wars-individually, with broken hearts and bleeding affections. Did truths like these require confirmation, we have but to look around us at subverted and tottering thrones, at armies routed by popular union, at statesmen precipitated from the helm, and princes driven into exile. How different is the natural geography of our globe-how permanent in its character, how stable in its boundaries! Gathered into islands, or expanding in continents sloping to the sea in valleys, or rising in table-lands-washed by the ocean, or bounded by the mountain range, the surface of the earth presents one great phase of durability and permanence, looming to the eye a mighty whole, fresh as when it came from its Maker's hand, and became the abode of his intellectual creation. The destroyer of animal life, the destroyer even of his species, the hand of man has not been able to alter even the expression of one of the features of the globe, and still less to break one of the smallest bones of its carpentry of adamant. He may have turned a few of its streams from their bed; he may have perforated its hills of rock or of clay, or scratched its yielding surface with his lines of intercommunication; but he has in vain attempted to enchain its ocean, or precipitate even the slenderest of its peaks of granite. There the great globe stands-unchanged by man-such as it was seen by the first of his race, and such as it will be seen by the last-washed, indeed, by the waters of a mighty deluge, but washed only from the impurities of its guilty occupants. In scanning, therefore, the terraqueous wonder, the philosopher takes cognizance only of the handiwork of its Maker. Neither the cloud-capt tower, nor the gorgeous palace, meet the intellectual eye. The din of war and the tumult of contending factions are by him alike unheard. He treads, without How interesting, then, must it be to study such a structure-the earth, the ocean, and the air combined; to escape altogether from the works and ways of man; to go back to primæval times, to learn how its Maker moulded the earth-how he wore down the primitive mass into the strata of its present surface-how he deposited in its bowels the precious materials of civilization-how he filled it with races of living animals, and again buried them in its depths, to chronicle the steps of creative power,how he covered its surface with its fruitbearing soil, and spread out the waters of the deep as the great highway of nations, to unite into one brotherhood the different races of his creatures, and to bless them by the interchange of their produce and their affections. Such are some of the lessons which Mrs. Somerville has undertaken to teach us in the very interesting work which we propose to analyze. From the loftier theme of physical astronomy in which she achieved her maiden reputation, and from the wide and rich field of the physical sciences, whose "connexion" she traced with a master's hand, Mrs. Somerville has descended to the humbler though not less important subject of natural or physical geography, and we have no doubt, from the popular character of the science, as well as from its relation to our sympathies and interests, that she will command a wider circle of readers, and enjoy the " gratification" so much desired by herself, of making the laws by which the material world is governed more familiar to her countrywomen." * Mrs. Somerville's work commences with a preliminary chapter on geology, which is introduced by the following brief and striking notice of the present condition and past history of the earth : "The increase of temperature with the depth * In order to preserve the continuity of this Article, we have followed Mrs. Somerville, in giving a brief and popular notice of the different formations which compose the crust of the earth; but the reader larly as they exist in the north of Europe and Asia, will find a more detailed account of them, particuin this Journal, vol. v. |