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." 



The 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 that 

 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 natural 

 limits, in the following manner : 



"That vast chain (says he) which rises on the Scandinavian pen- 

 insula, (Sweden and Norway,) does not occupy the whole of it. In 

 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 also, 

 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 mass 

 of Scandinavian mountains disappears so completely at its surface, 

 that there is really no connection between these mountains and those 

 of Finland ; this isthmus is therefore the natural limit of the Scan- 

 dinavian chain ; on all the other sides this chain is surrounded by the 

 North Sea, the Icy Sea and the Gulf of Bothnia. 



