THE EARTH.* THIS book, which is not only excellent, but
of fascinating interest to all who care for natural science, is the result of more than fifteen years' careful study, travel, and research, by an eminent living French author, and was translated by the late Mr. Wood- ward, the Queen's Librarian at Windsor Castle. In turning over its pages one does not wonder that this lamented man of letters should have given his time to rendering the work into good English, for it is so singularly poetical in its illustrations as to be quite redeemed from the reproach of scientific dryness, and some of its descriptions have reminded us of those imaginative chefs dceuvres of the last century, Gulliver's Travels and the Strange Experiences of Peter Wilkins.
M. Reclus tells us not only what the Earth is, but what by different nations and in far-gone ages it has been thought to be. "For the comparative study of the history, manners, and ideals of every nation, no book could be more useful than one which would contain all the cosmogonical conceptions which have been devised, down to our own times." The men of the North cannot think of nature as do the men of the South, who "constantly contemplate
* The Earth: a Descriptive History of the Phenomena of the Life of the Globe. By Made BA:clus. London: Chapman and Hall.
all the great phenomena of planetary life,—monsoons, hurricanes, the sudden overflows of rivers, and the rapid increase of immense tropical forests. To the Hindoos everything in nature is motion, never-ceasing creation and startling activity. According to one of their own books, Brahma, the eternal labourer, created the earth while surveying his own reflection in the ocean of sweat that had fallen from his brow."
One of the rich store of maps with which the book is illustrated is of "The World after the poetic accounts of Homer," not as we see in every atlas the world as known to antiquity, but what the ancients conceived it to be. Their earth was "a great disc, elevated at the edges by a lofty girdle of mountains, round which the river Ocean rolled its swelling waves. In the- centre of the disc, Olympus towered up with its three rounded summits, on which stood the mansions of the ever-happy gods, and Jupiter, throned on its loftiest crest, looked down through the clouds and saw the restless crowd busy at his feet. The land, divided into two halves by the blue sheet of the Mediterranean, stretched far away to the very verge of the disc, like the raised figures which ornament the front of a shield. Down from the heights of Olympus, the immortals contemplated in one glance all the peninsula of Greece, the white isles of the Archipelago, the coasts of Asia Minor, the plains of Egypt, the mountains of Sicily, inhabited by the Cyclops, and the Pillars of Hercules, the boundary-stones of the ancient world. All round, above the tracts inhabited by man, stretched the crystal dome of the firmament, borne up by the two columns of Atlas and Caucasus. That poetic conception was destined to fade before the northern imagery of later centuries, and both are now replaced by the wondrous picture, infinite in details, given us by M. Reeks.
Turning over his pages, we note many curious observations which deal with subjects collateral to science. M. Wolin notices the penury of the French language in regard to mountain nomen- clature. Most of the cities in which the language has been refined are situated on very level ground, or among hills very slightly undulated. Had Paris, Blois, and Orleans been built amidst mountains, adequate words would have been created. "The rich- ness and the propriety of the terms employed by the southern Germans, the Spaniards., and Italians when they wish to describe in one word various kinds of hills and mountains, are certainly derived from the fact that these nations have lived and formed their languages in full view of lofty summits." Humboldt quotes a long list of choicest terms employed by Castilian authors all significative of mountain forms. Many of the terms in use by the dwellers at the foot of the Pyrenees and French Alps deserve to be incorporated into the French written language.
It is not too much to say that the reader will find in this work the resund of all modern discoveries and conclusions laid down with singular clearness. The division into parts enables reference to be made at once to one point. For instance, Part I., on the Earth as a planet, contains five chapters. Part II., on the Land, contains twenty-seven. The other parts are respectively "The Circulation of Water," and "Subterranean Forces." Lovers of Alpine travel will find the question of glaciers treated with great perspicacity and adorned with numerous maps. A particu- larly interesting and picturesque series of chapters, at the end of the second volume, are given to the changes in form caused by the shifting of the mouths of rivers by the elevation and subsidence of land. M. Reclus tells us that on the coast of Normandy and Brittany numerous forests which have been submerged, and buildings surrounded by the sea water, prove that ground has sunk during the modern geological era. "In 709 the monastery of Mount St. Michael was built in the midst of a forest ten leagues from the sea, it now stands like an island in the midst of sandbanks. The inroads of the sea are still continuing, especially in the bay of La Hougue and in the harbour of Carteret." In other places partial upheavals take place. "At some remote epoch, but nevertheless contem- porary with man, the valley of the Somme was also upheaved ; but for thousands of years it has been slowly subsiding, as sub- marine forests are found along the coast ; and the peat bogs of Abbeville, the bottom of which are situated below the bay of Somme, afford no other debris but the remains of animals and vegetables which lived on the earth or in fresh water. When these peat-mosses began to grow, the ground of the valley must have been higher than the surface of the neighbouring seas."
As to Holland, it is gradually sinking "like a raft." The Zuydersee itself was once a marsh, next a lake, and "now an arm of the sea." Ships of heavier burden can now navigate it than could float upon its waters in former centuries. "Several savants, at the head of whom stands the eminent geologist M.
Staring, are of opinion that the gradual depression of the land which is thus embanked is caused only by the subsidence of the alluvial ground, the weight of the dykes, and the incessant pas- sage of men and cattle. Be that as it may, the change is known to have been going on for the last fifteen centuries, and is most rapid at the mouths of rivers,—the Scheldt, the Meuse, aud the Rhine. "At Calais the streets are more than a yard above the high tide, while the cultivated ground descends to the level of the tide. At Dunkirk the height of the streets is not more than twenty-three inches, and the fields are ploughed at a level of a yard below the sea. At Bruges and Ostend the streets are still lower, and the level of the polders is always sinking. Near the mouth of the Scheldt it is eleven-and-a-half feet below the high tide. Further to the north the ground gradually rises, but the streets of Rotterdam and Amsterdam are lower than the level of the equinoctial tides."
Sir Charles Lyell and Dr. Chambers have made us familiar with the fact of the upheaval of the Scandinavian peninsula, and M. Rains adds many curious details. Certain fine woods in Norway are "continually being upheaved towards the lower snow limits, and are gradually withering away in the cooler atmosphere ; wide belts of forest are composed of nothing but dead trees, although some of them have stood for centuries." The gulfs of Bothnia and Finland, like vessels tilted up out of the horizontal, slowly pour their waters into the southern basin of the Baltic. Fresh islets appear, and M. Reclus contemplates a remote future in which the Aland Isles will become connected with the continent, and will serve as a bridge between Stockholm and the empire of Russia.
Of South America we are told a very curious thing. The western coast, from the island of Chiloe to Callao, is upheaving ; Patagonia and Brazil are sinking. "Then a large portion of the South-American continent is constantly gaining on one side that which it loses on the other, and is gradually making its way through the ocean in a westward direction."
As we have lately been startled by the shock of an earthquake in the North of England, we turned to the chapter which treats of this subject, and found a mass of information, and an anecdote for which M. Reclus does not vouch, to the effect that at Naples the ants quitted their underground passages some hours before the earthquake of July 26, 1805, and that the grasshoppers crossed the town in order to reach the coast ; also that the fish approached the shore in shoals. Better attested is the fright of creatures dur- ing the catastrophe. "At the time of the earthquake which shook the valley of Viege in 1855, the wild birds which most dread the fowler, such as owls, woodpeckers, and peewits, collected on the trees close to the dwelling-houses, and uttered plaintive cries, as if to demand the succour of man. Birds of long flight, swallows and others, at once took wing, and flew away to distant parts. For several days also the frogs ceased their croaking."
Quotation, scientific and picturesque, might be indefinitely multiplied. M. Reclus breaks into poetical prose ever and anon, and has a literary skill which renders him remarkably readable. Were we condemned to a sick-room for six months with the choice of half-a-dozen books, we should be well content with this for one of them, for the sake of the immense field for the imagination which it opens to view.
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