The earth and man: lectures on comparative physical geography, in its relation to the history of mankind / By Arnold Guyot. Translated from the French, by C. C. Felton.

  • Guyot, A. (Arnold), 1807-1884.
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The earth and man: lectures on comparative physical geography, in its relation to the history of mankind / By Arnold Guyot. Translated from the French, by C. C. Felton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    42/370 (page 10)
    this continent, and barred the passage of the polar winds which now rush unobstructed over these vast plains; let us say even less ; if, preserving all the great present fea- tures of this continent, we suppose only that the interior plains were slightly inclined towards the north, and that the Mississippi emptied into the Frozen Ocean, who does not see that in these various cases, the relations of warmth and moisture, the climate, in a word, and with it, the vegetation and the animal world, would undergo the most important modifications, and that these changes of form and of relative position would have an influence greater still upon the destinies of human societies, both in the present and in the future ? It would be easy to multiply examples; but I do not wish to anticipate the results which will be brought out by the more exact study of these phenomena, which we are about to undertake. It is enough for me to have opened a view of the important part performed' by all these physical circumstances, and the necessity of study- ing them with the most scrupulous care. Let us not then despise the study of these outward forms, the influence of which is so evident. They are everything in this class of things. It is from the forms and the relative situation of the great terrestrial masses, placed under the influence of the general forces of nature, that we shall see flow all the great phenomena of the physical and individual life of the continents, and their functions in the great whole. But, gentlemen, it is not enough to have seized, in this point of view, entirely physical as yet, the functions of the