154 TEBRESTEIAL PHENOMENA. 



sively and every where susceptible of intellectual culture. 

 This unity of contemplation presupposes a combination of the 

 phenomena according to their intimate mutual connection : 

 a mere juxtaposition of facts would not fulfil the object 

 which I have proposed to myself; it would not satisfy that 

 desire for cosmical presentation awakened in me by the 

 aspect of nature during long voyages by sea and land, by a 

 careful study of forms and forces, and by a vivid impression 

 of the unity of nature in regions of the earth differing most 

 widely from each other. Much which in this attempt is 

 exceedingly defective, will, perhaps, soon be corrected and 

 completed by the rapid advance of all branches of phy- 

 sical science ; for it belongs to the fuller development of 

 knowledge, that parts which were at first isolated become 

 gradually connected, and subjected to the dominion of 

 higher law. I but indicate the path of observation and 

 experience in which I, and many others of like mind with 

 myself, advance, full of expectation that, as Plato has told 

 us Socrates once desired, " Reason shall be the sole inter- 

 preter of Nature/' ( 126 ) 



The description of the leading features of telluric pheno- 

 mena must begin with the form and relative dimensions of 

 the planet itself. Here, too, we may say, that as the crys- 

 talline, granular, and fossiliferous rocks respectively indicate 

 the modes of their formation, so the geometrical form of 

 the Earth reveals its earlier condition; an ellipsoid of 

 revolution indicating a once soft or fluid mass. Thus the 

 Earth's ellipticity constitutes, to the intelligent reader of 

 the book of nature, the record of one of the earliest telluric 

 facts. Analogous facts in the history of the Moon are 

 presented by the elliptical form of the lunar spheroid, and 



