OCEANIC DISCOVERIES 635 



lion of certain species of plants and animals ; the cause of the 

 trade winds, and of the constant oceanic currents ; the regu- 

 lar decrease of temperature on the declivities of the Cordil- 

 leras, and in the superimposed strata of water in the depths 

 of the ocean; and the reciprocal action of the volcanoes 

 occurring in chains, and their influence on the frequency 

 of earthquakes, and on the extent of circles of commotion. 

 The groundwork of what we at present term physical geo- 

 graphy, independently of mathematical considerations, is con- 

 tained in the Jesuit Joseph Acosta's work, entitled Historta 

 natural y moral de las Indias, and in the work by Gonzalo 

 Hernandez de Oviedo, which appeared hardly twenty years 

 after the death of Columbus. At no other period since the 

 origin of society, had the sphere of ideas been so suddenly and 

 so wonderfully enlarged in reference to the external world 

 and geographical relations ; never had the desire of observing 

 nature at different latitudes and at different elevations above 

 the sea's level, and of multiplying the means by which its 

 phenomena might be investigated, been more powerfully 

 felt. 



We might, perhaps, as I have already elsewhere remarked,* 

 be led to adopt the erroneous idea, that the value of these 

 great discoveries, each one of which reciprocally led to others, 

 and the importance of these twofold conquests in the physical 

 and the intellectual world, would not have been duly appreciated 

 before our own age, in which the history of civilisation has 

 happily been subjected to a philosophical mode of treatment. 

 Such an assumption is, however, refuted by the cotemporaries 

 of Columbus. The most talented amongst them foresaw the 

 influence which the events of the latter years of the fifteenth 

 century would exercise on humanity. " Every day," writes 

 Peter Martyr de Anghiera,f in his letters written in the years 



* Examen crit., t. i. pp. 3-6 and 290. 



t Compare Opus Epistolarum Petri Martyris Anglerii MedioU* 

 nensis, 1670, ep. cxxx. and clii. " Prae Isetitia prosiliisse te vixque ft 

 lachrymis prae gaudio temperasse quando literas adspexisti meas, quibua 

 de Antipodium Orbe, latenti hactenus, te certiorem feci, mi suarissimo 

 Pomponi, insinuasti. Ex tuis ipse literis colligo, quid senseris. Sen- 

 aisti autem, tantique rem fecisti, quanti virum summa doctrina insigni- 

 tum decuit. Quis namque cibus sublimibus pnestari potest ingeniif 

 leto suavior? quod condimentum gratius 1 ? a me facio conjecturauu 

 Beari seniio spiritus meos, quauuo accitos alloquor prudentes aliquos e> 



