Zoography has a close connection with the details of Modern Geography, as without a description of the properties and forms of the various races of animals, which all-bounteous Providence has placed on the Earth, for the sustenance or the use of man, a mere outline of the features of kingdoms and states would be, though not useless, yet uninteresting.
Botany also takes an active part in the formation of works of this nature, and perhaps, no other science has a more pleasing share in such undertakings, for every day, and almost every hour, discloses to the phytologist some new and singular variety of Natureʼs performance.
It is not our intention to enter into a disquisition on the Origin and Progress of Geography; this has been so ably performed in several very recent works, that it would be useless to attempt it, nor in fact could any thing more be said, to the purpose, on the subject than what has been already advanced; but instead of considering the different periods in which the science became more clearly illustrated, from the early ages; we shall content ourselves with looking only to its actual state, and to its connections with the subject of the present work.
Notwithstanding all the assistances which Geography derives from the maturity to which the sciences have arrived, yet it is still miserably deficient with respect to descriptions of some of the countries immediately surrounding us; the vast extent of European and Asiatic Russia, is also imperfectly known, Africa is yet unexplored, Tartary and the Chinese empire, have a veil of darkness drawn over them; New Holland is untraversed, and by far the greater portion of America remains to be visited by the European traveller.
To other nations it is a matter of little consequence, excepting as a source of curiosity, whether Englishmen have a thorough knowledge of the various little groups that surround their isle: but to a Briton there is no corner of his land, with which he does not wish to have a minute acquaintance.
Although we possess such an accurate knowledge of England, yet there are many parts of Scotland, and almost the whole of the western coast of Ireland, to which we are as much strangers as though they were situated beyond the Desert of Zahara.
Of Shetland scarcely any thing more than the mere outline of its coast is known to the British geographer, although it offers some of the most singular scenes, both natural and artificial, that can be found in the Northern Ocean.
These scenes consist, in the natural part, of the most fantastic and exuberant workings of Natureʼs ever varying pencil. Here she has grouped assemblages of the most extraordinarily formed islets, twisted and split in every direction; some reaching above the regions of the clouds, and showing, in their pointed or overhanging heads, the most dreadful precipices that can be imagined; such is the island of Foula, between the Orkneys and Shetland. In another place, a large island, which rises gradually on all sides from the sea to a great height, in the form of a parabolic conoid, has its body severed from the apex to the base, as regularly as if it had been the work of art; such is the islet Eglesha, on the west coast of Shetland. A third form is that of an immense islet rising perpendicularly on every side from the subjacent ocean to a great elevation, having its whole body perforated with an arch, of such dimensions that a large vessel could sail under it without lowering her topgallant sails. In short it would require a volume to detail the astonishing operations of nature in these islands.
The artificial scenery of Shetland consists in the numerous remains of ancient fortresses, hollow towers, castles, &c.