350 . Comparative Physical Geography. 



of the Sutlej, or still farther, recedes even beyond 19,000 

 feet. The greater elevation which the snow-line attains on 

 the northern edge of the belt of perpetual snow, is a pheno- 

 menon not confined to the Thibetan declivity alone, but ex- 

 tending far into the interior of the chain ; and it appears to 

 be chiefly caused by the quantity of snow that falls on the 

 northern portion of the mountains being much less than that 

 which falls further to the south, along the line where the 

 peaks, covered with perpetual snow, first rise above the less 

 elevated ranges of the Himalaya. — {Journal of the Asiatic 

 Society of Bengal. New Series. No. xxviii., p. 287.) 



On Comparative Physical Geography. 



It may interest our readers to be informed that Physical 

 Geography, founded on the views of Ritter, Humboldt, 

 Steffens, &c., has been explained and illustrated in an inte- 

 resting course of lectures delivered at Boston, in North 

 America, by a distinguished Swiss naturalist, Professor 

 Guyot, formerly of Neufchatel, now resident in the New 

 World. Professor Felton, of Harvard University, U. S., 

 has published, under the superintendence of M. Guyot, an 

 English vei'sion of these lectures (the Lectures were delivered 

 in the French language), under the title, " The Earth and 

 Man : Lectures on Comparative Physical Geography, in its 

 relation to the History of Mankind." Men of science speak 

 of them in high terms. Thus the celebrated Agassiz says 

 of Guyot, " He has not only been in the best school, that 

 of Ritter and Humboldt, and become familiar with the pre- 

 sent state of the science of our earth, but he has himself, in 

 many instances, drawn new conclusions from the facts now- 

 ascertained, and presented most of them in a new point of 

 view. Several of the most brilliant generalizations developed 

 in his lectures are his ; and if more extensively circulated, 

 will not only render the study of geography more attractive, 

 but actually shew it in its true light ; namely, as the science 

 of the relations which exist between nature and man through- 

 out history ; of the contrasts observed between the different 



