Wilson and Ogilvy, Skinner Street, Snowhill, London. ASPECTS OF NATURE, IN DIFFERENT LANDS AND DIFFERENT CLIMATES; WITH Scientific Elucidations. BY ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. TRANSLATED BY MRS. SABINE. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS, PATERNOSTER ROW; AND JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 1849....

It is not without diffidence that I present to the public a series of papers which took their origin in the presence of natural scenes of grandeur or of beauty,—on the Ocean, in the forests of the Orinoco, in the Steppes of Venezuela, and in the mountain wildernesses of Peru and Mexico. Detached fragments were written down on the spot and at the moment, and were afterwards moulded into a whole. The view of Nature on an enlarged scale, the display of the concurrent action of various forces or pow

The twofold aim of the present work (a carefully prepared and executed attempt to enhance the enjoyment of Nature by animated description, and at the same time to increase in proportion to the state of knowledge at the time the reader’s insight into the harmonious and concurrent action of different powers and forces of Nature) was pointed out by me nearly half a century ago in the Preface to the First Edition. In so doing, I alluded to the various obstacles which oppose a successful treatment of

In the translation the temperatures are given in degrees of Fahrenheit, retaining at the same time the original figures in Reaumur’s scale. In the same manner the measures are given in English feet, generally retaining at the same time the original statements in Parisian or French feet or toises, a desirable precaution where accuracy is important. The miles are given in geographical miles, 60 to a degree, but in this case the original figures have usually been omitted, the conversion being so si

[1] p. 1.—“ The Lake of Tacarigua. ” In proceeding through the interior of South America from the Caraccas or Venezuela shore towards the boundary of Brazil, from the 10th degree of North latitude to the Equator, the traveller crosses first an elevated mountain-chain running in an east and west direction, next vast treeless Steppes or Plains (los Llanos), which stretch from the foot of the above-named mountains (the coast chain of Caraccas) to the left bank of the Orinoco, and lastly the range w

[53] p. 209.—“ Across the peaceful ocean arm, which fills the wide valley between the American shore and Western Africa. ” The Atlantic Ocean, from the 23d degree of South to the 70th degree of North latitude, has the form of an excavated longitudinal valley, in which the salient and re-entering angles are opposite to each other. I first developed this idea in my “Essai d’un Tableau géologique de l’Amérique méridionale,” printed in the Journal de Physique, T. liii. p. 61. (Geognostische Skizze v

[64] p. 260.—“ Characteristic names in Arabic and Persian. ” More than twenty different terms might be cited as used by Arabs in speaking of steppes, (tanufah), to denote deserts without water, entirely bare, covered with siliceous sand, or interspersed with spots affording some pasture: (sahara, kafr, mikfar, tih, and mehme.) Sahl, is a low plain; dakkah, a desolate elevated plain. In Persian, “beyaban” signifies the arid sandy desert,—as do the Mogul “gobi,” and the Chinese “han-hai,” and “sch

I am indebted to Mr. Pentland (whose scientific labours have thrown so much light on the geology and geography of Bolivia) for the following determinations, which he communicated to me in a letter written from Paris, in October 1848, after the publication of his great map:— The heights (with the exception of the unimportant difference of a few feet in the South Peak of Illimani) are the same as those given in the map of the Lake of Titicaca. A sketch of the last-named mountain (Illimani), as it

BY ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. TRANSLATED BY MRS. SABINE. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. II. LONDON: PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS, PATERNOSTER ROW; AND JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 1849. LONDON: PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS, PATERNOSTER ROW; AND JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 1849. Wilson and Ogilvy, Skinner Street, Snowhill, London....

[1] p. 3.—“ On the Chimborazo, eight thousand feet higher than Etna. ” Small singing birds, and even butterflies, are found at sea at great distances from the coast, (as I have several times had opportunities of observing in the Pacific), being carried there by the force of the wind when storms come off the land. In the same involuntary manner insects are transported into the upper regions of the atmosphere, 16000 or 19000 feet above the plains. The heated crust of the earth occasions an ascendi

In the preceding sketch of a “Physiognomy of Plants,” I have had principally in view three nearly allied subjects:—the absolute diversity of forms; their numerical proportion, i. e. their local predominance in the total number of species in phænogamous floras; and their geographic and climatic distribution. If we desire to rise to general views respecting organic forms, the physiognomy of plants, the study of their numerical proportions (or the arithmetic of botany),—and their geography (or the

[38] p. 226.—“ A more complete determination of the height of all parts of the margin of the crater. ” Oltmanns, my astronomical fellow labourer, of whom, alas! science has been early deprived, re-calculated the barometric measurements of Vesuvius referred to in the preceding memoir (of the 22d and 25th of November and of the 1st of December, 1822), and has compared the results with the measurements which have been communicated to me in manuscript by Lord Minto, Visconti, Monticelli, Brioschi, a

I have noticed in the Preface to the Second and Third Editions (S. xiii., p. xii. English Trans.) the subject of the republication here of the preceding pages, which were first printed in Schiller’s Horen (Jahrg. 1795, St. 5, S. 90-96). They contain the development of a physiological idea clothed in a semi-mythical garb. In the Latin “Aphorisms from the Chemical Physiology of Plants” appended to my “Subterranean Flora,” in 1793,—I had defined the “vital force” as “the unknown cause which prevent

[41] p. 267.—“ On the ridge of the Chain of the Andes or Antis. ” The Inca Garcilaso, who was well acquainted with the language of his country and was fond of dwelling on etymologies, always calls the Chain of the Andes las Montañas de los Antis. He says positively, that the great Mountain chain east of Cuzco derived its name from the tribe of the Antis, and the Province of Anti which is to the east of the Capital of the Incas. The Quaternary division of the Peruvian Empire according to the four