12 
8TUDY OF PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 
I desire to promote, and, next to moral and religious doctrine, 
I know no more important practical lessons in this earthly life 
of ours—which, to the wise man, is a school from the cradle to 
the grave—than those relating to the employment of the sense 
of vision in the study of nature. 
The pursuit of physical geography, embracing actual obser¬ 
vation of terrestrial surface, affords to the eye the best general 
training that is accessible to all. The majority of even culti¬ 
vated men have not the time and means of acquiring anything 
beyond a very superficial acquaintance with any branch of 
physical knowledge. Natural science has become so vastly 
extended, its recorded facts and its unanswered questions so 
immensely multiplied, that every strictly scientific man must 
be a specialist, and confine the researches of a whole life within 
a comparatively narrow circle. The study I am recommend¬ 
ing, in the view I propose to take of it, is yet in that imper¬ 
fectly developed state which allows its votaries to occupy 
themselves with such broad and general views as are attain¬ 
able by every person of culture, and it does not now require a 
small letters being an inch or more high. They are formed with chalk or 
a slate pencil firmly grasped in the fingers, and by appropriate motions of 
the wrist, elbow, and shoulder, not of the finger joints. Nevertheless, 
when a pen is put into the hand of a pupil thus taught, his handwriting, 
though produced by a totally different set of muscles and muscular move¬ 
ments, is identical in character with that which he has practised on the 
blackboard. 
It has been much doubted whether the artists of the classic ages pos¬ 
sessed a more perfect sight than those of modern times, or whether, in exe¬ 
cuting their minute mosaics and gem engravings, they used magnifiers. 
Glasses ground convex have been found at Pompeii, but they are too 
rudely fashioned and too imperfectly polished to have been of any prac¬ 
tical use for optical purposes. But though the ancient artists may have 
had a microscopic vision, their astronomers cannot have had a telescopic 
power of sight; for they did not discover the satellites of Jupiter, which 
are often seen with the naked eye at Oormeeah, in Persia, and sometimes, 
as I can testify by personal observation, at Cairo. 
For a very remarkable account of the restoration of vision impaired 
from age, by judicious training, see Lessons in Life , by Timothy Titoomb, 
lesson xi. 
