As the oryctognostic knowledge of minerals differs from geology, so also does the general study of the physiognomy of nature differ from the individual branches of the natural sciences. The character of certain portions of the earth’s surface has been described with inimitable truthfulness by George Forster in his travels and smaller works, by Goethe in the descriptive passages which so frequently occur in his immortal writings, by Buffon, Bernardin de St. Pierre, and Chateaubriand. Such descriptions are not only calculated to yield an enjoyment of the noblest kind, but the knowledge of the character of nature in different regions is also most intimately associated with the history of the human race and its mental culture. For although the dawn of this culture cannot have been determined solely by physical influence, climatic relations have at any rate to a great extent influenced its direction, as well as the character of nations, and the degree of gloom or cheerfulness in the dispositions of men. How powerfully did the skies of Greece act on its inhabitants! Was it not among the nations who settled in the beautiful and happy region between the Euphrates, the Halys, and the Ægean Sea, that social polish and gentler feelings were first awakened? and was it not from these genial climes that our forefathers, when religious enthusiasm had suddenly opened to them the Holy Lands of the East, brought back to Europe, then relapsing into barbarism, the seeds of a gentler civilization? The poetical works of the Greeks and the ruder songs of the primitive northern races owe much of their peculiar character to the forms of plants and animals, to the mountain-valleys in which their poets dwelt, and to the air which surrounded them. To revert to more familiar objects, who is there that does not feel himself differently affected beneath the embowering shade of the beechen grove, or on hills crowned with a few scattered pines, or in the flowering meadow where the breeze murmurs through the trembling foliage of the birch? A feeling of melancholy, or solemnity, or of light buoyant animation is in turn awakened by the contemplation of our native trees. This influence of the physical on the moral world—this mysterious reaction of the sensuous on the ideal, gives to the study of nature, when considered from a higher point of view, a peculiar charm which has not hitherto been sufficiently recognised.