LECTURES. 123 



coast, either not given at all, or else in a shape so little like reality 

 that it would have been almost better to leave thein out altogether. 



The otlier qualities of the bottom of the ocean, its deep valleys and 

 lofty mountain-ranges, were of course not noticed in an age which 

 did' not possess our deep sea-sounding instruments, and which had 

 also no practical occasion for such explorations. This i)ractical in- 

 terest has existed only since the question has been mooted, where we 

 can lay with safety our electric wires for the connexion of the two 

 continents. For this purpose we now explore those hidden recesses, 

 and we may expect that ere long our pictures of the oceans will pre- 

 sent as great a variety of scenes as do those of the dry land itself. 



Before the middle of the eighteenth century, we scarcely find any 

 trace of a separation of political and physical maps. Although the 

 world possessed the most interesting and learned works on the plants, 

 the animals, the nations, &c., of all parts of the globe, still it seems 

 not to have occurred to any one that some of those subjects could be 

 treated in a much more successful, concise, and impressive manner in 

 a map, until, about the year 1790, a German (Mr. Crome) made the 

 first attempt at composing a special map of the vegetable productions 

 of the earth. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Lehmann 

 invented an improved method, or rather the first good method, of re- 

 presenting on maps the mountains and other inequalities of the sur- 

 face of the earth ; and from that time date our orographical maps. 

 At a little later period, another German, named Bernhardi, began to 

 compose maps on which the languages spoken in different countries, 

 with their extent and limits, were indicated by colors and lines ; and 

 here we have the origin of our ethnographic and linguistic maps, which 

 have found so much favor with the public. 



Geological maps scarcely had an existence before the year 1820. 

 After that year, geology, though still young, rapidly became a favorite 

 science, and many geological maps were published in quick succession. 

 Some of the first savants of Germany and France, Leopold von Buch, 

 Elie de Beaumont, and others, who saw that geology could scarcely 

 exist without maps, themselves condescended to the task of preparing 

 these indispensible drawings. At present there is hardly any country 

 concerning which an attempt, at least, has not been made to give 

 anatomical pictures of what is contained beneath its surface. 



When, at last, the ice was broken, progress in this direction was 

 rapid, and soon the German chartographer Berghaus composed his great 

 Physical Atlas of the Globe, in which he introduced at once quite a 

 number of new classes of maps, mineralogical, meteorological, clinia- 

 tological, hyetographical, palajontological, tidal, and moral, which 

 twenty years before had not been dreamed of. New fields of investi- 

 gation were opened in every direction, and we began dimly to fore- 

 see of what further development this new art was capable. 



If it be asked now, with respect to our special object, whether we 

 should include in our collection not only the commonly so called^ geo- 

 graphical maps and charts which have been made from olden times, 

 b.ut also all these new physical, moral, and other maps of recent 

 invention, I believe there can be no doubt that we should answer this 

 question in the afiirmative. 



