formation, and it owes its existence to those coralline reefs and firm calcareous sandstone of the system that is so extensively used by the architect... Another series of hilly ridges, somewhat more complicated in their windings, but generally running parallel to the oolite, and casting off spurs to the east, represents the upper and lower chalks of the beautifully undulating Downs - of a large extent of south-western England; while the softer weald, gault, green sand, and deposits of gravel and clay we find occupying the level plains or wide shallow valleys. Hugh Miller.

PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY.

ACTION OF CLIMATE UPON MAN.

SINCE man is made to acquire the full possession and mastery of his faculties by toil, and by the exercise of all his energies, no climate could so well minister to his progress in this work as the climate of the temperate continents. It is easy to under

stand this.

An excessive heat enfeebles man; it invites to repose and inaction. In the tropical regions the power of life in nature is carried to its highest degree; thus, with the tropical man, the life of the body overmasters that of the soul; the physical instincts of our nature, those of the higher faculties; passion, sentiment, imagination, predominate over intellect and reason; the passive faculties over the active faculties... A nature too rich, too prodigal of her gifts, does not compel man to snatch from her his daily bread by his daily toil. A regular climate, the absence of a dormant season, render forethought of little use to him. Nothing invites him to that struggle of intelligence against nature, which raises the forces of man to so high a pitch, but which would seem here to be hopeless... Thus he never dreams of resisting this all-powerful physical nature; he is conquered by her; he submits to the yoke; and becomes again the animal man.

In the temperate climates all is activity, movement. The alternations of heat and cold, the changes of the seasons, a fresher and more bracing air, incite man to a constant struggle, to forethought, to the vigorous employment of all his faculties... A more economical nature yields nothing except to the sweat of his brow; every gift on her part is a recompense for effort on his. Less mighty, less gigantesque, even while challenging man to the conflict, she leaves him the hope of victory; and if she does not show herself prodigal, she grants to his active and intelligent labor more than his necessities require; she gives him ease and leisure, which permit him to cultivate all the lofty faculties of his higher nature... Here physical nature is not a tyrant, but a useful helper; the active faculties, the

understanding, and the reason rule over the instincts and the passive faculties; the soul over the body; man over nature.

In the frozen regions, man also contends with nature, but it is with a niggardly and severe nature; it is a desperate struggle, a struggle for life and death. With difficulty, by force of toil, he succeeds in providing for himself a miserable support, which saves him from dying of hunger and hardships during the tedious winters of that climate. No higher culture is possible under such unfavorable conditions.

The man of the tropical regions is the son of a wealthy house. In the midst of the abundance which surrounds him, labor too often seems to him useless; to abandon himself to his inclinations is a more easy and agreeable pastime. A slave of his passions, an unfaithful servant, he leaves uncultivated and unused the faculties with which God has endowed him. The work of improvement is with him a failure.

The man of the polar regions is the beggar, overwhelmed with suffering, who, too happy if he but gain his daily bread, has no leisure to think of anything more exalted.

The man of the temperate regions, finally, is the man born in ease, in the golden mean, which is the most favored of all conditions. Invited to labor by everything around him, he soon finds, in the exercise of all his faculties, at once progress and well-being.

Thus if the tropical continents have the wealth of nature, the temperate continents are the most perfectly organised for the development of man. They are opposed to each other, as the body and the soul, as the inferior races and the superior races, as savage man and civilised man, as nature and history. This contrast, so marked, cannot remain an open one; it must be resolved. The history of the development of human societies will give us the solution, or at least will permit us to obtain a glimpse of the truth. Guyot.

THE EFFECTS OF THE FORM AND RELATIVE SITUATION

OF LAND.

In physics, nothing is fortuitous, nothing unimportant. Everything depends on a law ordained in wisdom to bring about certain results.

Is the question regarding forms of contour? Nothing characterises Europe better than the number and variety of its indentations, of its peninsulas, and of its islands... Suppose, for a moment, that beautiful Italy, and Greece with its entire

Archipelago, were added to the central mass, and augmented Germany or Russia by the number of square miles they contain; this change of form would not give us another Germany, but we should have an Italy and a Greece the less... Unite with the body of Europe all its islands and peninsulas into one compact mass, and instead of this continent, so rich in various elements, you will have a New Holland with its dreary uniformity.

Do we look to the forms of relief? Is it a matter of indifference, whether an entire country is elevated into the dry and cold regions of the atmosphere, like the central table-land of Asia, or is placed on the level of the ocean? See under the same sky, the warm and fertile plains of Hindostan, adorned with the brilliant vegetation of the tropics, and the cold and desert plateaux of Upper Tibet; compare the burning regions of Vera Cruz and its fevers, with the lofty plains of Mexico, and its perpetual spring; the immense forests of the Amazon, where vegetation puts forth all its splendors, and the desolate summits of the Andes, and you have the answer.

Let us look to relative position. Is it not to their position that the three peninsulas of the south of Europe owe their mild and soft climate, their lovely landscapes, their relation to other countries, and their social life?... Is it not to their situation that the two great peninsulas of India owe their rich nature, and the conspicuous part which one of them, at least, has played in all ages? Place them on the north of their continents, Italy and Greece become a Scandinavia, and India a Kamschatka... Europe owes its temperate atmosphere to its position relatively to the great marine and atmospheric currents, and to the vicinity of the burning regions of Africa. Place it to the east of Asia, it would be a frozen peninsula.

Suppose that the Andes were transferred to the eastern coast of South America, so as to hinder the trade wind from bearing the vapors of the ocean into the interior of the continent, the plains of the Amazon and Paraguay would be nothing but a desert... In the same manner, if the Rocky Mountains bordered the eastern coast of North America, and closed against the nations of the east and of Europe the entrance to the rich valley of the Mississippi; or if that immense chain extended from east to west across the northern parts of the continent, and barred the passage of the polar winds which now rush southward unobstructed; or if, even preserving all the great present features of this continent, we suppose only that the interior plains were slightly inclined towards the north, and that the Mississippi ran into the Frozen Ocean, the relations of warmth

and moisture, the climate, and with it the vegetation, and the animals, would undergo the most important modifications; and these mere changes of form, and of relative position, would have an incalculable influence upon the destinies of human society.

It is, then, from the forms and the relative situation of the great masses of land, modifying the influence of the forces of nature, that necessarily flow all the great phenomena of the physical and individual life of the continents, and their functions in the great whole.

QUALIFYING INFLUENCE OF THE WATER ON THE LAND CLIMATE.

It is important to mark the difference in those climates influenced by land, and those affected by the sea. This difference is owing substantially to the peculiar physical properties of the water and of the land... Water has a great capacity for heat, but a feeble conducting power: it grows warm but slowly in the rays of the sun. The evaporation also being considerable, produces a cooling which farther tempers the heat received at the surface. The superficial layer thus growing cool, the cooled molecules become heavy, sink down, and give way to the warmer molecules of the inferior strata.

Thus the heating and cooling are very deliberate, and do not reach the extremes. The air itself, by its contact, shares in the uniformity of temperature which belongs to the surface of the waters, and which, combined with the abundance of vapors that saturate the atmosphere, gives to the sea climate its peculiar character.

It is quite different with the surface of the soil, of which the particles are fixed. The soil rapidly absorbs the solar rays; the superficial layer is the more heated, since it cannot be displaced, as in the water, by another, and it soon attains an elevated temperature...But for the same reason, the ground easily loses heat by radiation, whether during the nights or the cold days; and the loss is so much the greater, as the radiation is favored by the inequalities of the surface, and the transparency of an atmosphere more dry, and less charged with clouds than that which rests upon the sea... The lands removed from the influence of the oceans, have then a climate characterised by the extremes of cold and heat, by more violent changes, and a drier atmosphere. These are the essential features of the continental climate.

If we now observe the manner in which sea and land are affected with regard to their temperature, they being near each