354 AUSTRALIA : 



beneficially applied than in forwarding those large re- 

 searches and surveys by which, while nurturing officers and 

 seamen of the highest class, we open new channels and give 

 fresh vigour and greater security to the undertakings of 

 commerce over the globe. 



In this age, indeed, we can no longer send adventurers 

 forth to achieve the discovery of new lands, or shores vaguely 

 shadowed out by the imagination of antiquity. With the 

 exception of the ice-bound tracts which circumscribe the poles, 

 and into which the disciplined boldness of our navigators has 

 of late deeply penetrated and with the further exception of 

 those large islands which form the south-eastern boundary of 

 the Indian Archipelago all the great outlines of the globe 

 may be said to have been drawn and defined. No Atlantis 

 now remains to be sought for in the Western Ocean ; nor is 

 there space or spot anywhere left for those romantic wonders 

 of the traveller, so pleasantly pictured by Ariosto : 



Che narrandole poi non se gli crede, 

 E stimato bttgiardo ne rimane. 



The human tails of Lord Monboddo's theory are no longer 

 considered hopeful subjects for research ; and even if the 

 modern story of a tribe of pigmies to the south of Abyssinia 

 were better accredited than it is likely to be, yet would this 

 afford poor compensation for the loss of the gigantic Pata- 

 gonians, whom recent voyagers have reduced to little more 

 than the ordinary level of the species. The new animals and 

 plants fetched from remote lands have severally their ana- 

 logues^ already named and registered, in our cabinets and 

 museums. While the huge bones and vestiges of extinct life, 

 which in all parts of the world have perplexed curiosity and 

 startled ignorance, are now submitted to technical descrip- 

 tion, and brought under the same strict laws of classification 

 as the living forms that surround us. 



