128 Physical Geography. 
“There are indeed treatises expressly on physical geography ; but 
they contain only the most general notions of this science,—of seas, 
mountains, rivers, climates, &c.; but we do not find in them the globe 
divided into its natural parts, nor the examination and comparison of 
these different parts. 
A second defect of our treatises of geography, whether political 
or physical, is that the countries are not compared with each other. 
The comparative method has produced the most happy fruits in 
zoology, geognosy, and other sciences ;—physical geography may, 
in like manner, be developed by a comparison of all countries, con- 
sidered under all their physical relations.” 
he author thinks that, in order that geography may deserve the 
name of a science, the pupil should understand the relations which 
exist between the exterior form of the globe, the properties of the 
atmosphere,—of vegetables and animals, and in what manner the 
climate is connected with the soil, how it influences the vegetable 
and animal kingdoms, and how all these physical causes modify the 
character of the human race. He has often been surprised thet 
teachers should so fatigue their pupils with a fastidious enumeration 
of the political divisions of foreign countries, and with a crowd of 
minute details relative to statistics, while they furnish them only with 
the slightest notion of the orographic structure of Europe, of cli- 
mates, and of the distribution of the principal species of vegetables 
and animals. 
Prof. Schouw then proceeds to the comparison of the three great 
chains of mountains before mentioned, first pointing out their na 
limits, in the following manner: 
“That vast chain (says he) which rises on the Scandinavian per 
insula, (Sweden and Norway,) does not occupy the whole of it. 
truth, an almost continuous series of large lakes, but little elevated 
above the sea, and a plain interspersed with low hills, separates the 
southern part of Sweden from the great chain. The isthmus *” 
situated between the Gulf of Bothnia, the Icy Sea and the White 
Sea, and uniting the peninsula to the continent, is so little elevated 
above the sea, according to De Buch and Wahlenberg, and the mas 
of Scandinavian mountains disappears so completely at its surfaces 
that there is really no connection between these mountains and thos? 
of Finland ; this isthmus is therefore the natural limit of the Se 
dinavian chain ; on all the other sides this chain is surrounded by ihe 
North Sea, the Icy Sea and the Gulf of Bothnia. 
