He died at Paris on the 10th of
November 1861.
Besides the above-mentioned works, he wrote: _Essais de zoologie
generale_ (1841); _Vie ... d'Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire_ (1847);
_Acclimatation et domestication des animaux utiles_ (1849; 4th ed.,
1861); _Lettres sur les substances alimentaires et particulierement
sur la viande de cheval_ (1856); and _Histoire naturelle generale des
regnes organiques_ (3 vols., 1854-1862), which was not quite
completed. He was the author also of various papers on zoology,
comparative anatomy and palaeontology.
GEOGRAPHY (Gr. [Greek: ge], earth, and [Greek: graphein], to write), the
exact and organized knowledge of the distribution of phenomena on the
surface of the earth. The fundamental basis of geography is the vertical
relief of the earth's crust, which controls all mobile distributions.
The grander features of the relief of the lithosphere or stony crust of
the earth control the distribution of the hydrosphere or collected
waters which gather into the hollows, filling them up to a height
corresponding to the volume, and thus producing the important practical
division of the surface into land and water. The distribution of the
mass of the atmosphere over the surface of the earth is also controlled
by the relief of the crust, its greater or lesser density at the surface
corresponding to the lesser or greater elevation of the surface. The
simplicity of the zonal distribution of solar energy on the earth's
surface, which would characterize a uniform globe, is entirely destroyed
by the dissimilar action of land and water with regard to radiant heat,
and by the influence of crust-forms on the direction of the resulting
circulation. The influence of physical environment becomes clearer and
stronger when the distribution of plant and animal life is considered,
and if it is less distinct in the case of man, the reason is found in
the modifications of environment consciously produced by human effort.
Geography is a synthetic science, dependent for the data with which it
deals on the results of specialized sciences such as astronomy, geology,
oceanography, meteorology, biology and anthropology, as well as on
topographical description. The physical and natural sciences are
concerned in geography only so far as they deal with the forms of the
earth's surface, or as regards the distribution of phenomena. The
distinctive task of geography as a science is to investigate the control
exercised by the crust-forms directly or indirectly upon the various
mobile distributions. This gives to it unity and definiteness, and
renders superfluous the attempts that have been made from time to time
to define the limits which divide geography from geology on the one hand
and from history on the other. It is essential to classify the
subject-matter of geography in such a manner as to give prominence not
only to facts, but to their mutual relations and their natural and
inevitable order.
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