Meviews — Ansted's Physical Geography. 267 



the labour of reducing such observation to systematic results and the 

 deductions drawn from the facts and generalizations." 



In expressing deductions from the facts, the author says he has 

 perhaps in some cases " given his own views without pointing out 

 that other physical geographers and geologists have expressed, and 

 still hold, different opinions. It was not his object to enter into a 

 discussion upon any subject, and he believes that where the conclu- 

 sions arrived at differ most from popular notions, they are not incon- 

 sistent with the views of those who are recognised both in England 

 and on the Continent as the ablest pioneers of science." The pre- 

 face concludes with a recommendation to use Johnston's Physical 

 Atlas as a companion to the work, in order to supply a very im- 

 portant deficiency in the absence of all maps or illustrations. 



No special list of authorities consulted is given, though several 

 acknowledgments of quotations, etc., occur as foot notes or in the 

 body of the work; and, indeed, the "array of facts" which have 

 been collected with great apparent care from the latest and best 

 sources of information, would, it may be presumed, render a general 

 list anything but an easy task to compile. The author's personal 

 observations are seldom separated from those collected from other 

 sources ; and while the whole volume contains the record and classifi- 

 cation of a vast number of these, special cosmical theories are in 

 general but obscurely or partially advocated, and the labour of 

 drawing deductions respecting them is left largely to the reader. 



The volume is divided into six parts, under the headings, Intro- 

 duction, Earth, Water, Air, Fire, and Life. Of these, if we 

 except sundry passages in other parts of the work, the three called 

 Earth, Water, and Fire — comprising less than half of the volume — 

 are devoted to those subjects vulgarly or popularly supposed to 

 constitute the science of Physical Geography. 



In the first chapters the earth is considered as a planet, and 

 physical forces are treated of. Here, within thirty -two pages, more 

 than eighty subjects, — astronomical, terrestrial, chemical, electrical, 

 or otherwise physical, — are dealt with ; so that thus far the general 

 reader has to thank Professor Ansted for a rather comprehensive 

 outline of such matters in connexion with physical geography. In 

 this place also (p. 7), on the subject of the earth's interior, we find 

 the following : — " There is no reason to suppose that any granite 

 with which we are cognizant has been formed even at so great a 

 depth as twenty miles, a distance so small compared with the earth's 

 diameter, that it fails to have any value in guiding us to a know- 

 ledge of the more distant material of the real interior. At that 

 greatest depth it seems clear that the ordinary surface conditions, 

 acting upon ordinary surface materials, might and would have pro- 

 duced the rocks we find. They may, therefore, be nothing more 

 than altered conditions of such rocks as are still formed and de- 

 posited in our seas." But while the views of Professor Thompson 

 and Mr. Hopkins, regarding the earth's rigidity, find favor, and the 

 likelihood is s'tated that, at least, half the distance from the surface 

 to the centre of the earth, or two thousand miles, is solid and rigid, 



