The peculiar difficulties attending the translation of the Geographical Studies have not been met in this volume; in the University lecture-room, Ritter’s style, which, before the Royal Academy, was extremely involved, poetical and inexhaustive, became simple, straightforward, and luminous. In style, Ritter carried neglect to the point of slovenliness; and the finish which Humboldt cultivated so assiduously, he rejected as unworthy of a true scholar. The highly figurative words with which he used so liberally to decorate his writings, I have generally had to render with a rather too bare fidelity to a prose style; for grateful and captivating as they were to his German hearers, they would look over-fanciful to an English reader, and obscure rather than illustrate the thought. It has been my earnest purpose to make this work fill a great void in our educational literature; and its convenient size gives it an incomparable advantage over the voluminous works of Sir John Herschel and Mrs. Somerville; while in rigid philosophical precision, in method, in natural growth—not to use that inevitable German word _development_, (Entwickelung)—even those eminent geographers would, doubtless, award it the palm. The demands of the public may yet render needful the translation of other of Ritter’s works; meanwhile, the editor of this work purposes to prepare a biography of that great man, whose memory all his pupils revere, and whose life was not less beautiful to his friends than it was fruitful and valuable to the whole scientific world. W. L. G. July 5, 1864. CONTENTS. PAGE INTRODUCTION. Introductory Remarks ix Solar System. Planets. Middle Position of the Earth. Figure of the Earth. Ptolemaic System. Copernicus. Conception of Geography. The Earth as the Dwelling-place of Man xiv General Remarks. Geography as a Science xv The Earth and Man. Geography. Scientific Definition of Geography. Geography as a Science. What Geographical Science has yet to accomplish xix The Earth a Unit. Geographical Treatises. Comparative Geography. Sources of Geographical Science xxv The Study of our own Neighborhood. Strabo, Cluver, Humboldt. The Sciences illustrative of Geography xxvii Illustrative Sciences. Nautical Science. COMPARATIVE GEOGRAPHY. PART FIRST. THE SURFACE OF THE EARTH CONSIDERED IN ITS MOST GENERAL RELATIONS.