HIS EXTRA-PROFESSIONAL INTERESTS 97 



orbits, and light comets in their flight — nothing more. 

 But the physical geographer, when he warms himself 

 by the coal fire in winter, or studies by the light of the 

 gas burner at night, recognizes in the light and heat 

 which he then enjoys the identical light and heat which 

 ages ago came from the sun, and which with provident 

 care and hands benignant have been bottled away in the 

 shape of a mineral and stored in the bowels of the earth 

 for man's use, thence to be taken at his convenience, and 

 liberated at will for his manifold purposes. 



"Here, in the schools which are soon to be opened, 

 within the walls of this institution which we are preparing 

 to establish in this wood, and the corner stone of which 

 has just been laid, the masters of this newly ordained 

 science will teach our sons to regard some of the common- 

 est things as the most important agents in the physical 

 economy of our planet. They are also mighty ministers 

 of the Creator. Take this water" (holding up a glassful) 

 "and ask the student of physical geography to explain 

 a portion only of its multitudinous offices in helping to 

 make the earth fit for man's habitation. He may recog- 

 nize in it a drop of the very same which watered the 

 Garden of Eden when Adam was there. Escaping 

 thence through the veins of the earth into the rivers, 

 it reached the sea; passing along its channels of circula- 

 tion, it was conveyed far away by its currents to those 

 springs in the ocean which feed the winds with vapor 

 for rains among these mountains ; taking up the heat in 

 these southern climes, where otherwise it would become 

 excessive, it bottles it away in its own little vesicles. 

 These are invisible; but rendering the heat latent and 

 innocuous, they pass like sightless couriers of the air 

 through their appointed channels, and arrive here in the 



