34 ENLARGED VIEWS OF PHYSICAL 



wide range of creation, may be likened to a journey in a 

 distant country. Before undertaking it, we are inclined to 

 measure, perhaps not without mistrust, both our own 

 strength and that of the guide who offers to conduct us. 

 But our fears may be lessened by remembering how in our 

 days, an increasing knowledge of the mutual relation of 

 phsenomena, leading to the attainment of general results, has 

 more than kept pace with the vast increase of separate 

 observations. The chasms which divide facts from each 

 other are rapidly filling up ; and it has often happened that 

 . facts observed at a distance have thrown a new and unex- 

 pected light on others nearer home, which had long seemed 

 to resist all efforts at explanation. Plants and animals which 

 had long appeared insulated, become connected with others 

 by the discovery of intermediate forms before unknown ; and 

 the geography of beings endowed with organic life receives 

 completeness, as we behold species, genera, and whole 

 families, peculiar to one continent, reflected, so to speak, 

 in analogous forms, or, as it were, in equivalents, in 

 the opposite continent. These transitions may be traced, 

 in the sometimes fuller, sometimes more rudimentary, 

 development of particular parts, or in their different relative 

 importance in the balance of forces, or in the junction of 

 distinct organs, or sometimes in resemblances to intermediate 

 forms, not permanent, but only characteristic of particular 

 phases of a normal development. Passing to the considera- 

 tion of inorganic bodies, and to examples which characterise 

 strongly the advances of modern geology, we see how, 

 according to the grand views of Elie de Beaumont, chains 

 of mountains, dividing different climates, floras, and nations, 

 reveal to us their relative age, by the nature of the sedimen- 



