AMONG the many titles to fame of the venerable Humboldt, none is so highly merited or so peculiar to himself, as that earned by his labors on the Physical History and Geography of the Globe. In the earlier days of this Review the teaching of geography, as then understood and practiced amongst us, was a dry and barren task; tedious to the teacher, distasteful and of slender profit to the scholar. Bald catalogues of easily forgotten names, (locorum nuda nomina, as Pliny calls them,) uninformed by science and scantily illustrated by history, formed the staple of the study. Nor was any part of education more defaced by the coarser mechanism of book-making. Errors of fact, and even of nomenclature, were perpetuated from one edition or compilation to another, with little regard to original accuracy, or to the changes going on in the world. And even where some frag

The Physical Geography of the Sea. By Lieut. MAURY, U. S. Navy. London and New York: 1856. Arctic Explorations in the Years 1853, 1854, and 1855. By Dr. KANE, U. S. Navy. Philadelphia: 1856.

Considérations Générales sur l'Océan Atlantique. Par PHILIPPE DE KERHALLET. Paris: 1853.

VOL. XLI.-NO. III.

ment of history or physical science broke in upon the network of names, it was often of doubtful authenticity, or too partial and detached to give real knowledge or gain hold on the memory. This is not an exaggerated view of the manner in which geography was generally taught in England down to a recent period.*

The more exact study of history had already improved the methods and extended the sphere of geography, before

* The progress made in the last quarter of a cenwhere more perceptible than in the books of geotury in the philosophical study of the earth is nographical reference to which we have now ready access. At the head of these we have great pleasure in placing Messrs. Fullarton's "Gazetteer of the World," or, as it is more properly entitled, "Dictionary of Geographical Knowledge "-a work which has recently been completed, and which combines to a remarkable extent comprehensive views of the physical geography of the globe, with a vast amount of political and statistical information, and all the minuteness and accuracy which is required in a dietionary of places. We know no book of equal excellence on these subjects in any other language. Not less meritorious, though more compendious, are Mr. Keith Johnston's contributions to geographical literature. The Gazetteer which bears his name is remarkable for its completeness; and his Atlas of the United States of America supplies a deficiency which has long been felt on both sides of the Atlantic.

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