THE ATLANTIC OCEAN. 197 



than formerly, we still find them in some controversies of 

 recent date; gaining a prompt influence over the public 

 mind ; as injurious, we believe, to the interests of religion as 

 of the sciences thus forced into contact with it. 



We come now, and with more satisfaction, to the legitimate 

 object of Captain Maury's work, the great watery empire 

 of the globe ; the aspects and phenomena of oceans and seas ; 

 their various physical relations, as well to the continents and 

 islands they encircle, as to the atmosphere incumbent over 

 all ; and that farther relation they bear to the efforts of 

 human industry, intrepidity, and skill, which have rendered 

 the most distant paths of ocean open and assured to all 

 nations of the earth. The Atlantic is the especial object of 

 our author's labours ; and accordingly we find the first parts 

 of his volume occupied almost exclusively with this ocean. 

 Though we may explain the preference, we cannot wholly 

 acquiesce in it as preliminary to a physical history of the sea 

 at large. The subject requires to be prefaced by those more 

 general views of the distribution and relative configuration 

 of water and land over the globe, which form the very foun- 

 dation of physical geography, and are fertile in curious and 

 important conclusions. Facts which, if stated at all, are 

 loosely and incongruously scattered over the volume, ought 

 to have been put before the reader in some connected form ; 

 as indicating the nature and magnitude of the objects con- 

 cerned. Captain Maury plunges him at once into mid-ocean, 

 without compass or guidance over its world of waters. A 

 greater familiarity with the writings of Humboldt, Eitter, 

 Von Buch, and other authors, principally Grerman> who have 

 done so much for the study of physical geography, would 

 have furnished both model and materials for a preliminary 

 chapter, such as we desire for a work bearing this title and 

 dealing with objects so vast and various in kind. 



We may cursorily state here, in illustration, a few of those 



