Physwcal Geography. | 127 
Art. XV.—Physical Geography. 
(Translated from the Bibliotheque Universelle, by Professor Griscom.) 
G. F. Scnouw, Professor of Botany in the University of Copen- 
hagen, having for several years taught Physical Geography as a dis- 
tinct science, embracing facts of the highest interest, and which ought 
not to be separated, as they are in most of the modern treatises of 
geography, nor connected with those statistical details for which they 
have no natural affinity and with which they are usually so much en- 
cumbered, has commenced the publication of his course of lectures, 
by a work in 4to of 65 pages, with three lithographic plates. He 
has chosen the Latin as the medium of his communications,—the 
Danish language not being sufficiently diffused throughout Europe to 
be generally understood by literary men. In this first specimen of 
his work, Prof. Schouw has chosen to exhihjt a comparison of the 
three great mountain chains of Europe,—the Alps, the Pyrenees, 
and the Scandinavian mountains. 
In the preliminary observations, he _animadverts upon the method 
by which Geography is taught, in the numerous abridgments of that 
Saence usually employed in schools. ‘I do not fear to affirm (he 
remarks) that, paradoxical as the assertion may appear, our abridg- 
ments of geography do by no means describe the globe, or fulfill 
what ought to be expected from them, in relation to the science of 
which they profess to treat.”—“The blending of Geography and 
Statistics is injurious, as it attempts to unite things which are neces- 
sarily distinct and separates things which have a necessary connec- 
tion. Thus, the Alpine Region, which certainly forms one whole, 
'sfound in the books of geography in various places, under the heads 
be Switzerland, Italy, France, Germany, Hungary, &c.; so that that 
Which forms a great unit cannot be seized at one view, and therefore 
the recollection of it cannot fail to be confused and imperfect. Spain 
and Portugal, so closely united by nature, are also separated ;—in 
treating of Russia, Nova Zembla and the Crimea are taken into the 
*Ccount s—in describing Denmark, they speak of Iceland, Greenland 
and the Danish Colonies in Asia, Africa and America; and thus is 
Produced a Most singular confusion of countries and climates, the 
—— diverse and opposite. These defects, in addition to that of in- 
oducing so much statistical matter that has little or no relation to 
aera, are sueh as to prevent the scholar’s agquiring from them 
¥ Just and faithful image of our globe. 
