189. European Population.

The total population of Europe, pure and mixed, amounts to about 232 millions, including 600,000 Gipsies. The Teutonic population in the United States of North America and in the British colonies amounts to 20 millions; so that the total number of people of Teutonic blood is rather more than 100 millions.—Notes accompanying the Ethnographic Map of Europe, by Dr. Gustaf Kombst: “Phys. Atlas.”

190. Population or Great Britain and Ireland.

Notes accompanying the Ethnographic Map of Great Britain and Ireland, by Gustaf Kombst: “Phys. Atlas.”

The fear that Britain may be ruined by over population may be allayed by considering that we are ignorant of the immense treasures and inexhaustible resources of the natural world—that the ingenuity of man is infinite, and will continually discover new powers and innumerable combinations that will furnish sources of wealth and happiness to millions.

191. From the discrepancies in the chronological systems it is evident that the actual period of man’s creation is not accurately known. The Chevalier Bunsen has ascertained, from monumental inscriptions, that the successive Egyptian dynasties may be traced back to Meres, 3640 years before the Christian era, and from the high state of civilization during the reign of that prince, proved by the magnificence of the works thus executed, he infers that the Egyptians must have existed 500 years previous to their consolidation into one empire by him, which goes back to the renewed period of man’s creation. Compared with geological periods, man is of very recent creation, as appears from the vast extent of uninhabited land, but which would require ages and ages to people, even if the increase of population were as rapid as in the United States of North America.

192. Dark-coloured substances absorb more of the sun’s heat than light-coloured ones; therefore, the black skins of the natives of tropical climates absorb more heat than fair skins, but, from some unknown cause, the black skin is protected from a degree of heat that would blister a fair one.

193. The countenances of the Fuegians brought to England in 1830 by Captain Fitzroy improved greatly in expression by their intercourse with civilized men, but they had not returned to their savage brethren more than a year before their whole appearance was completely changed; the look of intelligence they had acquired was gone; and when compared with likenesses that had been taken of them when in England, they were not to be recognized as the same persons.

194. Johnston’s “Physical Atlas.”

The average age of a nation, or the mean duration of life, has a considerable influence on the character of a people. The average age of the population of England and Wales is 26 years 7 months. By the census, the average age of the population of the United States of North America is 22 years 2 months. In England there are 1365 persons in every 10,000, who have attained 50 years of age, and consequently of experience; while, in the United States, only 830 in each 10,000 have arrived at that age: hence, in the United States, the moral predominance of the young and passionate is greatest. In Ireland there are 1050 persons in every 10,000 of the population, above 50 years of age, to exercise the influence of their age and experience upon the community—an influence that will diminish with the progress of emancipation.

195. It is singular that the British should, for years, have possessed such extensive territories in Asia without having explored their mineral wealth. Perhaps the quantity of gold recently discovered in California and Africa may call the attention of the East India Company to the subject. Some of the richest mining districts are in countries where primary formations have been crossed or disturbed by volcanic action; and as that is eminently the case along the eastern coast of the Bay of Bengal, from Aracan to the peninsula of Malacca, mines of the precious metals will most likely be found on that frontier, possibly in Siam and the Birman empire. The interior of the Deccan has also been greatly disturbed by ancient volcanos; and as that country is said to bear a strong analogy in structure to South Africa, it may also resemble it in the production of gold. The auriferous territory in California appears to be at least 400 miles long and 100 broad.

196. In bringing to a close a work which may in some measure be considered a kind of Résumé of Natural knowledge, it may not be either out of place or irrelevant to our subject to allude more particularly to the encouragement of late years granted to scientific investigation by our own Government.

It must be confessed that Great Britain for a long time remained behind the nations of the continent in fostering scientific enterprise and research; and if England has rivalled in most branches of natural knowledge, and surpassed in some, every other people, it has arisen more from individual exertion, and that spirit of association which forms so happy a characteristic of our race, and which has in our political institutions so mainly contributed to our national greatness and prosperity, than from any direct encouragement from our rulers. Whilst France and other continental nations were endowing the votaries of science, were lavishing money on scientific expeditions, and founding institutions which will hand down the names of their sovereigns to posterity as the benefactors of mankind, England had done little in the same track beyond fitting out those memorable expeditions of Cook, and, subsequently, those of Vancouver and Flinders, and the support granted to our great national Observatory, which, under the direction of Bradley, Maskelyne, Pond, and Airy, has attained a degree of celebrity and utility unequalled by any astronomical foundation in ancient or modern times.

The conclusion of a long war, in opening the scientific repositories of the continent to our countrymen, showed us how much our great institutions, with the above solitary exception, were behindhand, not only in extent and utility, but in the liberality with which they were conducted. Possessing as we did the most ample means, from our immense colonial possessions and our widely-extended commerce, to add to the stock of our knowledge in natural history, our collections were infinitely behind those of the great states of the continent, and scarcely on a par with those of the sovereigns of a second and even third rate importance. A better system was loudly called for, and a better system has been adopted. Our great national collection of the British Museum—and I here refer more particularly to its scientific and antiquarian department, for there is still much room for improvement in the literary—has in a few years, thanks to the liberality of Parliament and the exertions of its trustees and officers, become equal in every respect, and superior in many, to any similar institution on the continent. Two establishments have been created within the last dozen of years which reflect the greatest honour on the statesmen, Sir F. Baring, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the late Earl of Besborough, as chief Commissioner of the Woods and Forests, who fostered them in their infancy, and on the talented individuals who had been selected to carry out the enlightened views of the Government—the Museum of Practical Geology, a designation that conveys a very inadequate idea of the extent of its attributes or of its utility, and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. To the first the public is already indebted for such a geological survey and map of the empire as never had been planned or executed in any other country—only a small instalment, however, of great services which the nation and geological science are likely to derive from the labours of Sir H. Delabeche and his collaborators. The Royal Gardens at Kew, under the direction of Sir W. J. Hooker, lose nothing when compared with the most celebrated establishments of the kind, ancient or modern: never was public money better bestowed, or in a way to convey more useful instruction and gratification to the great mass of the community. Whilst every German university had its Museum of Comparative Anatomy, when the government of revolutionary France had placed at the disposal of Cuvier ample means to lay the basis of that science of which he was to be considered the founder, an eminent surgeon, John Hunter, animated by the love of science alone, and unaided by his Government, was rendering a similar service to Great Britain, in laying the foundation of that Museum which so justly bears his honoured name. Thanks to the liberality of the Government, and to the well-judged appreciation of the Royal College of Surgeons, the Hunterian Collection has become the property of the nation, and has received such additions and ameliorations as not to be behind any of those of the continent; whilst in point of arrangement, facilities granted for study, and real practical utility, it infinitely surpasses them all. To it we principally are indebted for the introduction of the study of comparative anatomy into this country, and for the possession of one of its greatest modern expositors, Professor Owen.

It may appear invidious, at a time when every department of our Government is showing itself so desirous of promoting the cause of science, to point to any in particular: still we cannot refrain from making special mention of one to which science in general, and more particularly that branch of it which forms the principal object of this work, and our best national interests, owe a deep and lasting debt of gratitude—the Hydrographic department of the Admiralty; which, under its present able chief, Sir Francis Beaufort, has attained a degree of eminence unequalled by that of any other maritime country. The Admiralty has profited of a long peace to extend our knowledge over almost every region of the globe, conferring thereby an immense service on geographical science, and placing in the hands of our national and commercial marine a collection of charts and nautical instructions unparalleled in the history of navigation for their extent and exactitude. Another branch of inquiry, closely connected with Hydrography and Navigation, which it required the encouragement of a government to institute, the investigation of the laws of terrestrial magnetism and meteorology, has been very liberally provided for by Parliament, and most ably carried out, under the direction of Colonel Sabine, by the establishment of special observatories in our widely extended colonies, and by the publication and distribution of their results.

The several maritime expeditions undertaken since the peace in a purely scientific view reflect the highest credit on the departments of the Government with which they have originated, as they do on the eminent individuals, many of whom still live to enjoy their well-merited fame, who have carried out their country’s wishes. The names of Parry, Franklin, Back, James C. Ross, and Richardson, will be preserved in the memory of posterity long after the ephemeral glory of their professional career will have been forgotten.

Although it is to the projectors of such an altered state of things, and to the statesmen who encouraged and brought it about, that our first acknowledgement is due, our thanks must be also expressed to that branch of the legislature which, holding, as it rightly does, the public purse, has so liberally come forward upon every occasion, when solicited, in granting the means to promote scientific enterprise. The votary of science therefore owes to the House of Commons the expression of his unmingled gratitude.

But, in paying that just tribute to the ministers of the Crown and to Parliament, we must not pass over in silence the encouragement which science has in every department met with from the East India Company. Lords of an immense territory, the Court of Directors, and its representatives in India, have always shown themselves ready to contribute in a most liberal spirit to the extension of our knowledge of their widely extended empire. The trigonometrical surveys of India, the establishment of observatories, the endowment of colleges and of scientific societies, the formation of collections of natural history at great expense, and which it distributes to all those who are likely to make good use of them, the publication of works on physical researches, on natural history, of astronomical observations, bestowed with so liberal a hand to men of science, the formation of such a map of its extended dominions and of charts of its coasts as would do honour to any government, must place the East India Company in the first rank of those mighty potentates of the earth to whom science will both now and in after ages feel placed under the most lasting obligations.

Connected with our Oriental empire, it is due to some of the native sovereigns of India to state that they have not been behindhand in imitating the liberal example of their powerful protectors. Two native princes, the Rajah of Travancore and the King of Oude, have at very great expense established astronomical observatories in their territories, furnished with European instruments of the most delicate construction, and placed under the direction of European officers amply endowed and provided for. The peninsula of India at the present moment possesses four astronomical observatories little behind those of Europe as regards the means of observation; until very lately there did not exist one public observatory in the whole extent of the United States of America.

[A national observatory was established at Washington in the year 1843.]

197. Sir John Rennie.

198. Charles Babbage, Esq.

199. We learn, on closing the present volume, that this distinguished traveller, through the liberality of Her Majesty’s Government, is again about to proceed to the former field of his exertions.

200. The works of Cornelius and Kaulbach bear testimony to the justice of the observations in the text. In drawing, nothing can be more beautiful—in composition, nothing can be more varied or sublime. The “Destruction of Jerusalem,” by Kaulbach, in which a powerful genius has combined the truth of the historian with the imagination of the poet, and executed with the hand of a master, might bear comparison even with the Italian school for colouring.

201. Twenty of these counties were in England and 11 in Wales, and so few crimes took place among educated women in the other counties during the 11 years mentioned, that the annual proportion of accusations against educated females was only 1 in 1,349,059. During the year 1846 only 48 educated persons were convicted of crimes out of the whole population of England and Wales, and none were sentenced to death. And during the years 1845 and 1846 there were 15 counties in England and 11 in Wales in which no well-educated person was convicted of any crime. The number of accusations among educated persons in Scotland is greater, because education is more general, and because the quantity of ardent spirits used in Scotland is five times greater than in England. Crime is very much below the average in the mining districts, and it is still less frequent in Wales and in the mountainous country in the North of England. The accomplishments of a well-educated person in these statistical records consist merely in being able to read and write fluently.—“London Statistical Journal.”

202. Every factory-child is limited to 48 hours of labour in the week, and the children must by law attend school at least two hours a-day for six days out of the seven, besides a Sunday-school—one penny being deducted out of each shilling of wages for education. The inspectors have the power of establishing schools where wanted, and of dismissing incompetent teachers. The engagement of factory-children in Britain lasts till they are 13, in the United States it ends at 15 years of age.—“Statistical Journal.”

203. The average duration of the life of sovereigns is greater in modern than in ancient times, but it is still lower than any other class of mankind. The most favourable average for them is 70·05 years; for the English aristocracy it is 71·69; for the English gentry, 74·00; for the learned professions, 73·62; for English literary and scientific men it is 72·10; for the army and navy, 71·99; and for the professions of the fine arts, 71·15.—“London Statistical Journal.”

204. There are 62 Ragged Schools in London, and Government undertakes to send annually to the colonies 150 of such of the scholars as choose to go.—“London Statistical Journal.”

205. The letters affixed indicate the parts of the Alps to which each locality belongs—M., Maritime; C., Cottian; G., Grecian; P., Pennine; L., Lepontine; B., Bernese, or Helvetian; R., Rhetian; J., Julian; Car., Carniac.

206. The authorities on which these heights are given are—the Piedmontese Surveys (P. S.), as published in 1845, in the Work entitled “Le Alpi che cingono l’Italia,” 1 vol. 8vo.; the Austrian Survey (A. S.), as given in the splendid Maps, published by the Austrian Government, of the Regno Lombardo-Veneto, in 84 sheets; and the Swiss Trigonometrical Survey, by Eichman, 1 vol. 4to., 1846.

207. The first eight passes are only fit for foot-passengers, and in certain seasons for mules; the remaining eleven offer carriage-roads, and are generally open at all seasons of the year, with the exception of the Stelvio.

208. Heights taken from the list published in the French “Annuaire du Bureau des Longitudes,” converted from metres into English feet.

209. Heights determined by the French expedition under Captains Peytier and Boblaye, and published in the “Connaissance des Temps” for 1839.

210. The heights in the Sikim Himalaya are the results of the observations of Colonel Waugh, Director of the Trigonometrical Survey of India. See “Journal of As. Soc. of Bengal,” Nov. 1848.

211. For Lieut. Strachey’s observations during his very interesting journey to the Sacred Lakes of Manasarowar, &c., see “Journal of As. Soc. of Bengal,” Aug. 1848.

212. See Hooker’s “Journal of Botany,” May, 1849.

213. The heights followed by the letters A. C. have been taken from Humboldt’s “Asie Centrale.”

214. The heights given on Captain Vidal’s authority are taken from the elaborate Admiralty Surveys of Madeira, the Canaries, and Azores, partly executed under his direction; the latter not yet published.

215. The heights given in this table on Mr. Pentland’s authority have been taken from his Map of “The Laguna of Titicaca, and of the Valleys of Yucay, Collao, and Desaguadero,” published in 1848.

216. As stated in the text, vol. i., p. 155. The height here assigned to the Peak of Aconcagua differs 700 feet from that given by Captain Fitzroy. A re-calculation, however, of his elements has led us to adopt a much greater elevation for the giant of the Chilian Andes than given by that talented officer.

Captain Fitzroy’s observations place the summit of the Peak of Aconcagua, which on his chart is incorrectly designated as a volcano, in lat. 32° 38ʹ 30ʺ, long. 70° 00ʹ 30ʺ W., or 23ʹ 23ʺ N., and 100ʹ 45ʺ E. of Valparaiso, or its nearest distance about 88 9-10 geographical miles. From a station near Captain Fitzroy’s, at Valparaiso, Captain Beechy found the angle of elevation of Aconcagua, by several very careful observations, to be 1° 55ʹ 45ʺ, the distance from this station to the Peak being 88·74 geographical miles. From a discussion of all these data, the compiler of this table has deduced for the height of Aconcagua 23,910 feet above the sea.