^4 On Physical Geography. 



with a fastidious enumeration of the political divisions of foreign 

 countries, and with a crowd of minute details relative to statis- 

 tics, while they furnish them only with a superficial notion of 

 the orographic structure of Europe, of climates, and of the dis- 

 tribution of the principal vegetables and animals. 



Professor Schouw then proceeds to the comparison of the three 

 great chains of mountains before mentioned, first pointing out 

 their natural limits, in the following manner: " That vast 

 chain,'* says he, " which rises in the Scandinavian peninsula 

 (Sweden and Norway), does not occupy the whole of it. In 

 truth, an almost continuous series of large lakes, viz. Wenner, 

 Wetter, Malar, &c., but little elevated above the sea, and a plain 

 interspersed with low hills, separates the southern part of Swe- 

 den from the great chain. The isthmus also, situated between 

 the Gulf of Bothnia, the Icy Sea and the White Sea, and unit- 

 ing the peninsula to the continent, is so little elevated above the 

 sea, according to De Buch and Wahlenberg, and the mass of 

 Scandinavian mountains disappears so completely at its surface, 

 that there is really no connection between these mountains and 

 those of Finland. This isthmus is therefore the natural limit of 

 the Scandinavian chain ; on all the other sides, this chain is sur- 

 rounded by the North Sea, the Icy Sea, and the Gulf of Bothnia. 



" The natural limits of the Alps it is rather more difficult to 

 establish. The Apennines are so closely connected with the (so 

 called) Maritime Alps, that they are justly considered as an arm 

 of that chain. In like manner, towards the east, the Alps ex- 

 tend to the mountains of Croatia and Dalmatia, and even to 

 those of Bosnia, the eastern portion of which formerly bore the 

 name of Hemus. But as in physical geography we are allowed 

 to consider, when we form subdivisions, not one alone, but a 

 great number of different relations, each of those spurs ought to 

 be separated from the principal branch, on account of the differ- 

 ence of climate and vegetation which characterizes them ; and, 

 even independently of these, the change of direction which is evi- 

 dent at the points of junction of these branches with the Alps, the 

 lowering of the ridges, and their geognostic character, would 

 be sufficient to require or to admit of their separation. The 

 Alps and the Pyrenees can be considered as a single chain of 

 mountains, only by those who embrace the hypothesis of the 



