OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 273 



that Australia began to emerge from its former obscurity, and 

 to assume a definite form in the eyes of geographers. $ Now 

 began the great epoch of Abel Tasman. We do not purpose 

 here to give the history of individual geographical discoveries, 

 but simply to refer to the principal events by which, in a short 

 space of time and in continuous connection, two thirds of the 

 earth's surface were opened to the apprehension of men, in 

 consequence of the suddenly awakened desire to reach the 

 wide, the unknown, and the remote regions of our globe. 



An enlarged insight into the nature and the laws of phys- 

 ical forces, into the distribution of heat over the earth's sur- 

 face, the abundance of vital organisms and the limits of their 

 distribution, was developed simultaneously with this extended 

 knowledge of land and sea. The advance which the different 

 branches of science had made toward the close of the Middle 

 Ages (a period which, in a scientific point of view, has not 

 been sufficiently estimated), facilitated and furthered the sens- 

 uous apprehension and the comparison of an unbounded mass 

 of physical phenomena now simultaneously presented to the 

 observation of men. The impressions were so much the 

 deeper and so much the more capable of leading to the estab- 

 lishment of cosmical laws, because the nations of Western 

 Europe, even before the middle of the sixteenth century, had 

 explored the New Continent, at least along its coasts, in the 

 most different degrees of latitude in both hemispheres ; and be- 

 cause it was here that they first became firmly settled in the 

 region of the equator, and that, owing to the singular configu- 

 ration of the earth's surface, the most striking contrasts of veg- 

 etable organizations and of climate were presented to them at 

 different elevations within very circumscribed limits of space. 

 If I again take occasion to allude to the advantages presented 

 by the mountainous districts of the equinoctial zone, I would 

 observe, in justification of my reiteration of the same senti- 

 ment, that to the inhabitants of these regions alone it is grant- 

 ed to behold all the stars of the heaven, and almost all fami- 

 lies and forms of vegetation ; but to behold is not to observe 

 by a mental process of comparison and combination. 



Although in Columbus, as I hope I have succeeded in show- 

 ing in another work, a capacity for exact observation was de- 

 veloped in manifold directions, notwithstanding his entire de 

 ficiency of all previous knowledge of natural history, and sole- 

 ly by contact with great natural phenomena, we must by no 



* See the excellent work of Professor Meinecke of Prenzlau, entitled 

 Das Festland Australien, eine Geogr. Monographie, 1837, th. i., s. 2-10 



M2 



