Nor can this constitution of things be the result of a happy accident. Evidently under the supreme power of a Divine mind and will, Nature is made subservient to Man. That mutual working and interdependence of things, which opens to our comprehension the History of our race, cannot be ascribed to a fortuitous combination of events. It can only be the result of Divine Providence. Had there been no wise ruling of the blind forces of nature, no subjection of the rough, unbridled powers of the air, and sea, and earth, the human race would have become extinct, as so many races of beasts have done. But there are no traces of the extinction of a human race in our Paleontology. The constitution of the globe is incontestably coincident with a plan to preserve and perfect Man. There are destructive agencies, it is true, but they do not operate on an extended scale; our earthquakes, and volcanoes, and great storms at sea affect but a fraction of the race, they are no longer universal in their action; while, on the contrary, the instrumentalities which favor mankind remain in force—the earth’s changeless garment of green, the uniform progress of generation among subordinate creatures, the ease of acclimatization, and of transferring seeds and germs, with undiminished fruitfulness, from one region to another. The very agencies which, in the dawn of history, brought death, have been changed to auxiliaries of life with us to-day. The investigation into the relations of the Earth, in this respect, and into the organization of all the natural laws and phenomena in their bearing on man, his life and history, must constitute a prominent department of true geographical science. When Geography ceases to be a lifeless aggregate of unorganized facts, and becomes the science which deals with the earth as a true organization, a world capable of constant development, carrying in its own bosom the seeds of the future, to germinate and unfold, age after age, it first attains the unity and wholeness of a science, and shows that it grows from a living root; it becomes capable of systematic exposition, and takes its true place in the circle of sister sciences. Philosophy gladly grants it a share in its own domain, and permits it to indulge in those soaring speculations, which it used to be thought that so simple a thing as Geography might not enjoy. Yet, it must not be denied that there has for some time been felt a need of bringing the earth, as an organization, more into the light of scientific investigation. The study of final causes, the tracing of infinite wisdom in the works of the Creator, the theories touching the first issue of all things, have grown out of this necessity. Many errors have, doubtless, drifted in during the course of these speculations; man has undertaken to measure the Divine plan with most imperfect data, and the illusion has been too fondly cherished of attaining final and profound results while men were scarcely in the possession of the