50 Transactions of the Society. 



great difficulty and mucli bribery they at last succeeded in com- 

 municating with their Consul and were seb at liberty. This was 

 in January, 1827, during which month they reached Buenos Ayres. 



It would be far beyond the scope of the present work to 

 attempt to give any general account, however condensed, of the 

 events of this memorable journey or of its broad results. Von 

 Humboldt had explored the Orinoco, and Castelnau the Amazon ; 

 d'Orbigny followed the course of the Parana, up to Corrientes and 

 on to Barranqueras, in a native boat, in momentary danger of 

 wreck, and of being devoured by jaguars. An added peril was 

 that of falling into the hands of the notorious and infamous 

 Dr. Francia, Dictator of Paraguay, who refused to allow strangers 

 in his country. Von Humboldt's companion, the friend of the 

 d'Orbigny famil}^, Bonpland, had been caught by him and 

 imprisoned, in spite of all protests from the Courts of Europe, 

 for six years. The career of a " Naturaliste-voyageur " was not, in 

 these times, devoid of possible incident. 



Apart from the personal interest attaching to the man himself, 

 the autobiography of this enthusiastic young traveller is full of 

 extraordinary charm. • The natural history collections which he 

 made fill one with amazement, when we reflect upon the diffi- 

 culties of transport w^hich he must have experienced ; we are told 

 of 4000 species of insects, 150 Crustacea, 150 fishes, 600 mollusca, 

 100 reptiles, of which a very large number were new to science.^ 

 He made careful studies of geographical distribution, and most 

 minute observations upon the life-histories and habits of the 

 creatures which he watched durins;^ nearlv seven vears. He 

 founded a complete theory of the stratigraphical geology of the 

 South American continent, and collected pal?eontological specimens 

 in illustration thereof, and we see here the basis of his remarkable 

 views on the Cosmogony and his theory of successive Creations, 

 establishing the relationship between the geological formations 

 of the Old and New Worlds. 



He made a careful study of the native races, and contributed 

 to antbropology a complete treatise upon American Man," besides 

 several isolated papers. He verified Buffon's law of distribution, 

 he mapped the districts that he traversed, and completed the 

 geographical studies of Pentland, and introduced important cor- 

 rections into the existing maps of South America. Of Bolivia he 

 constructed not only a geographical but also a geological map. 



* The biographer in Larousse gives us as the results of the voyage : 160 mam- 

 mals, 860 birds, 115 reptiles, 166 fish, 980 mollusca and zoophytes, 5000 insects 

 and Crustacea, and 3000 plants, in addition to extensive geological, paleeontological, 

 and ethnological collections. 



- Besides the important section on this subject forming part of vol. iv. of 

 the larger work (1839), he published a work in two volumes entitled " L'homme 

 Americain (de I'Amerique Meridionale) considere sous ses rapports physiologiques 

 et moraux," Paris-Strasburg, 1839. 



