184 Proceedings of the Royal Society 
The trees and plants too of distant zones will show themselves 
in true relief, — the banyan clinging with its hundred roots to the 
ground, — the bread-fruit tree, with its beneficent burden, or the 
deadly upas, preparing its poison for the arrow of the savage or 
the poniard of the assassin. With no less interest will the school- 
boy gaze on the structures of the inorganic world, — the minerals 
which have lain in the eartli beneath his feet, — the crystals which 
chemistry has conjured into being, displaying to him their geo- 
metric forms, infinite in variety, and interesting from their rarity 
and value. Painted by the very light which they reflect, he will 
see the Koh-i-noor and other diamonds, and the huge rubies and 
sapphires and emeralds which have adorned the chaplet of beauty, 
and sparkled in the diadems of kings. The gigantic productions 
of the earth will appeal to him with equal power — the colossal 
granites which have travelled in chariots of ice, the precipices of 
ancient lava, the doric colonnades of basalt, and the fossil giants 
of the primeval world, which trod the earth during its prepara- 
tion for man, and have been embalmed in stone — to instruct and 
to humble him. 
In acquiring a knowledge of physical geography, of the grander 
aspects of nature, their representations in relief will be peculiarly 
instructive. The mountain range, whether scarred with peaks, or 
undulating in outline ; — the volcano ejecting its burning missiles ; 
— the fixed or the floating iceberg ; — the glacier and its moraines ; 
— and even the colossal wave, with its foaming crest, will be por- 
trayed in all the grandeur of nature. 
The works of human hands, too, will stand before the scholar in 
their pristine condition, or their ruined grandeur; — the monuments 
by which sovereigns and nations perpetuate their names ; — the 
pyramids, with their mysterious legacy to science ; — the gorgeous 
palaces of kings; — the garish temples of superstition; — and the 
bastions and strongholds of war, will be seen as if the observer 
were placed at their base, and warmed by the very sun which 
shines upon their walls. 
Although few of our village youth may become sculptors, yet 
the sight of ancient statues, in actual relief, and in their real ap- 
parent magnitude, cannot fail to instruct and to refine them. To 
gaze upon the masterpieces of ancient art, standing in the very 
