“Take the little nautili. Where do the fragile creatures go? What directing hand guides them from sea to sea? What breeze fills the violet sails of their frail little craft, and by whose skill is it enabled to brave the sea and defy the fury of the gale? What mysterious compass directs the flotilla of these delicate and graceful argonauts? Coming down from the Indian Ocean, and arriving off the stormy cape, they separate—the one part steering for the Pacific, the other for the Atlantic Ocean. Soon the ephemeral life that animates these tiny navigators will be extinct; but the same power which cared for them in life now guides them in death, for though dead their task in the physical economy of our planet is not finished, nor have they ceased to afford instruction in philosophy. The frail shell is now to be drawn to distant seas by the lower currents. Like the leaf carried through the air by the wind, the lifeless remains descend from depth to depth by an insensible fall even to the appointed burial place on the bottom of the deep; there to be collected into heaps and gathered into beds which at some day are to appear above the surface a storehouse rich with fertilizing ingredients for man’s use. Some day science will sound the depth to which this dead shell has fallen, and the little creature will perhaps afford solution for a problem a long time unsolved; for it may be the means of revealing the existence of the submarine currents that have carried it off, and of enabling the physical geographer to trace out the secret paths of the sea. (Great applause). “Had I time, I might show how mountains, deserts, winds, and water, when treated by this beautiful science, all join in one universal harmony—for each one has its part to perform in the great concert of nature. (Renewed applause). “The Church, ere physical geography had yet attained to the dignity of a science in our schools, and even before man had endowed it with a name, saw and appreciated its dignity,—the virtue of its chief agents. What have we heard chanted here in this grove by a thousand voices this morning?—A song of praise, such as these hills have not heard since the morning stars sang together:—the Benedicite of our Mother Church, invoking the very agents whose workings and offices it is the business of the physical geographer to study and point out! In her services she teaches her children in their songs of praise to call upon certain physical agents, _principals_, in this newly established department of human knowledge,—upon the waters above the firmament; upon showers and dew; wind, fire, and heat; winter and summer; frost and cold; ice and snow; night and day; light and darkness; lightning and clouds; mountains and hills; green things, trees, and plants; whales, and all things that move in the waters; fowls of the air, with beasts and cattle,—to bless, praise, and magnify the Lord. (Tremendous applause.)