162 C03MOS. 



8ea, ill which organic hfe is almost entirely limited to the ani- 

 mal world. The liquid element is again covered by the at* 

 mosphere, an aer'.al ocean in which the mountain chains and 

 high plains of the dry land rise like shoals, occasioning a va- 

 riety of currents and changes of temperature, collecting vapor 

 from the region of clouds, and distributing life and motion by 

 the action of the streams of water which flow from their de- 

 clivities. 



While the geography of plants and animals depends on 

 these intricate relations of the distribution of sea and land, the 

 configuration of the surface, and the direction of isothermal 

 lines (or zones of equal mean annual heat), we find that the 

 case is totally difierent when we consider the human race — 

 the last and noblest subject in a physical description of the 

 globe. The characteristic difierences in races, and their rela- 

 tive numerical distribution over the Earth's surface, are con- 

 ditions afiected not by natural relations alone, but at the same 

 time and specially, by the progress of civilization, and by moral 

 and intellectual cultivation, on which depends the political 

 superiority that distinguisl^es national progress. Some few 

 races, clinging, as it were, ti» the soil, are supplanted and ruined 

 by the dangerous vicinity of others more civilized than them- 

 selves, until scarce a trace of their existence remains. Othei 

 races, again, not the strongest in numbers, traverse the liquid 

 element, and thus become the first to acquire, although late, 

 a o-eoo-raphical knowledge of at least the maritime lands of the 

 whole surface of our globe, from pole to pole. 



I have thus, before we enter on the individual characters 

 of that portion of the delineation of nature which includes the 

 sphere of telluric phenomena, shown generally in what man- 

 iier the consideration of the form of the Earth and the inces 

 sant action of electro-magnetism and subterranean heat may 

 enable us to embrace in one view the relations of horizontal 

 expansion and elevation on the Earth's surface, the geognostic 

 type of formations, the domain of the ocean (of t\v liquid por- 

 tions of the Earth), the atmosphere with its meteorological 

 processes, the geographical distribution of plants and animals, 

 and, finally, the physical gradations of the human race, which 

 is, exclusively and every where, susceptible of intellectual cul- 

 ture. This unity of contemplation presupposes a connection 

 of phenomena according to their internal combination. A 

 mere tabular arrangement of these facts would not fulfill the 

 object I have proposed to myself, and would not satisfy that 

 requirement ibr cosmical preseiitatiou awakened in me by the 



