148

66

When I, a pioneer in one department of this beautiful
science, discover the truths of revelation and the truths
of science reflecting light one upon the other and each
sustaining the other, how can I, as a truth-loving, knowl-
edge-seeking man, fail to point out the beauty, and to re-
joice in its discovery? Reticence on such an occasion
would be sin, and were I to suppress the emotion with
which such discovery ought to stir the soul, the waves
of the sea would lift up their voice and the very stones
of the earth cry out against me. (Great applause.)

As a student of physical geography, I regard earth,
sea, air and water, as parts of a machine, pieces of
mechanism not made with hands, but to which never-
theless, certain offices have been assigned in the terres-
trial economy. It is good and profitable to seek to find
out these offices, and point them out to our fellows;
and when, after patient research I am led to the discov-
ery of any one of them, I feel with the astronomer of
old, as though I had "thought one of the God's thoughts"
--and tremble. Thus as we progress with our science
we are permitted now and then to point out here and
there in the physcial machinery of the earth a design of
the Great Architect when He planned it all.

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 lit-
tle 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 grace-
ful argonauts? Coming down from the Indian ocean,
and arriving off the stormy cape they separate--the one
part steering for the Pacific, the other steering 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 phycial econo-
my of our planet is not finished, nor have they ceased to
afford instruciton in philosophy. The frail shell is now
to be drawn to distant seas by the lower currents. Like

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NOTE.--See Lucion Bubois in "Le Correspondant," 25th of
July, 1860.

67

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 store house 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 ex-
istence 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. (Re-
newed applause.)

The Church, ere physical geography had yet attained
to the dignity of a science in our schools, and even be-
fore man had endowed it with a name, saw and appre-
ciated 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 to-
gether:--the BENEDICITE of our mother Church, in-
voking 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 hu-
man knowledge,--upon the waters above the firma-
ment; 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.)

To reveal to man the offices of these agents in making
the earth his fit dwelling place, is the object of physical
geography. Said I not well that of all the sciences