650 COSMOS. 



sical and ethnological character of this archipelago, as to be 

 the first to propose that the Australian Polynesia should be dis- 

 tinguished as a fifth portion of the earth. It was not until the 

 Dutch power acquired the ascendancy in the Moluccas, 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 connexion, 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 

 physical forces, into the distribution of heat over the earth's 

 surface, 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 towards the close 

 of the middle ages, (a period which, in a scientific point of view, 

 has not been sufficiently estimated,) facilitated and furthered 

 the sensuous 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 

 because 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 

 vegetable organisations 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 sentiment, that to the inhabitants of these regions alone 



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

 Das Festland Austrcdien, eine geogr. Monographic, 1837, th. i. 

 &. 2-10. 



