LIMITS AND METHOD OF EXPOSITION. 45 



Lord Bacon ; from Bacon to D'Alembert ; and still more 

 recently to a sagacious physicist of our own time, Andre-Marie 

 Ampere ( 20 ) . The selection of an inappropriate G reek nomen- 

 clature has, perhaps, been even more prejudicial to the last of 

 these attempts, than the abuse of the binary division and the 

 excessive multiplication of groups. 



The physical description of the universe as an object of 

 external sense, does indeed require the aid of general physics 

 and of descriptive natural history ; but the consideration of 

 the material creation, all the parts of which are linked toge- 

 ther by mutual connection, under the figure of a natural 

 whole animated and moved by inward forces, gives to the 

 science which now occupies us a peculiar character. Physical 

 science dwells on the general properties of matter ; it is an 

 abstract representation of the manifestations of physical 

 forces, and in the work in which its earliest foundations were 

 laid, in the eight books of Physics of Aristotle ( 21 ), all the 

 phenomena of nature are depicted as the moving vital activity 

 of a universal force or power. 



The telluric portion of the physical description of the 

 universe, to which I preserve the old and expressive title of 

 physical geography, treats of the distribution of magnetism 

 on our planet in its relations of intensity and direction, but 

 does not teach the laws of magnetic attraction and repulsion, 

 or the means of eliciting powerful electro -magnetic effects, 

 whether transitorily or permanently. Physical geographj 

 describes in bold and general outlines the compact or in- 

 dented configuration of continents, and the distribution of 

 their masses in both hemispheres, a distribution which 

 powerfully influences the differences of climates and the most 

 important meteorological processes of the atmosphere; it 



