Page:A Life of Matthew Fontaine Maury.pdf/194

180 for man's use. Some day science will sound the depths to which this deadshell has fallen, and the little creature will perhaps afford solution for a problem as yet unsolved; for it may be the means of revealing the existence of the submarine currents that have carried it off, and of enabling the physical geographer to trace out the secret paths of the sea.

"Had I time I might show how mountains, deserts, winds, and water, when treated by the light of this beautiful science, all join in one universal harmony, for each one has its part to perform in the great concert of nature. . ..

"The Church, ere yet physical geography had attained to the dignity of a science in our schools, and even before man had endowed it with a name, saw and appreciated its dignity, the virtue of its chief agents. What have we heard 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 together the 'Benedicite' of our mother Church, invoking 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 human knowledge; upon the waters above the firmament, upon the showers, 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, tree 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!"

In the end of 1860, Maury had occasion to visit England on business connected with the publication of his book. While he was in London, he was the guest of the Royal