Since the publication of the first edition of this work, the Author has been able to correct many inaccuracies that had crept into it, and to collect much new matter from works since published, which is embodied in the present edition, and has considerably added to its size. The recently-published Second Volume of Baron Humboldt’s invaluable “Cosmos,”^[1] with Colonel Sabine’s learned notes, and sundry papers that have appeared in the scientific periodicals of Europe, America, and India, bearing on questions of Physical Geography, have yielded profitable information.

It was the Author’s wish, and her Publisher’s intention, that the present edition should be accompanied by a series of Maps to illustrate the more important questions of Physical Geography treated of in it; but Mr. A. Keith Johnston having announced the publication of a new edition of his “Physical Atlas” in a reduced size, at a low price,^[2] the first two Nos. of which have already appeared, the project was relinquished, in the belief that Mr. A. K. Johnston’s smaller Atlas will furnish suitable illustrations to this work.

The reader will find this edition enriched with some of the results of the recent researches of Messrs. Campbell, Thomson, Strachey, and Dr. Hooker in the Himalaya, which tend largely to elucidate the Physical History of that gigantic chain. The book is also indebted to Mr. Pentland for some new matter, hitherto unpublished, on the countries of South America visited by him during his two public missions to Peru and Bolivia.

The absence of the Author from England during the printing of the following sheets has obliged her to have recourse to a friend conversant with her subject to revise the press; to him she begs to express her acknowledgments, as well as to Sir William Jackson Hooker, who very kindly undertook to correct the portion of this new edition connected with Geographical Botany and Vegetable Physiology—subjects respecting which he has so much contributed to extend our knowledge. Captain Beechey has been good enough to render similar service, in revising certain passages bearing upon Hydrography.

May, 1849.