A GREAT CHANGE. 89 



to change his scene of action. Another ship is 

 given to him, another route entered on, and he 

 ceases altogether to prosecute his inquiries in the 

 old region. Or old age comes on ; and even 

 although he may have been beginning to have a 

 few faint glimmerings as to laws and systems in his 

 mind, he has not the power to make much of these. 

 He dies ; his knowledge is, to a very large extent, 

 lost, and his log-books disappear, as all such books 

 do, nobody knows or cares where. 



Now this state of things has been changing 

 during the last few years. Log-books are collected 

 in thousands. The experiences of many men, in 

 reference to the same spots in the same years, 

 months, and even hours, are gathered, collated, and 

 compared ; and the result is, that although there 

 are conflicting elements and contradictory appear- 

 ances, order has been discovered in the midst of 

 apparent confusion, and scientific men have been 

 enabled to pierce through the chaos of littlenesses 

 by which the world's vision has been hitherto 

 obscured, and to lay bare many of those grand pro- 

 gressions of nature which move unvaryingly with 

 stately step through space and time, as the river, 

 with all its minor eddies and counter-currents, flows 

 with unvarying regularity to the ocean. 



