THE MAGAZINE 



OF 



NATURAL HISTORY. 



JANUARY, 1829. 



Art. I. Remarlcs on the present State of Natural History in ,| 

 Germany, By W. J. 



From the time that Germany, now ruled by so many princes 

 who love and favour art, was freed from the yoke of Napoleon, 

 it has been rapidly advancing in science. The natural sciences, 

 in particular, have been cultivated with great zeal; and we 

 shall not be far from the truth, if we assert that it was by the 

 very agitation of the period alluded to, when Paris had also 

 become the capital of Germany, that the great progress which 

 these sciences have made was accelerated. The German is a 

 collector by nature ; and in almost every city of moderate size, 

 a collection of some sort may be found, belonging to some 

 private inhabitant or scholar. During the sway of the French, 

 many learned men from Germany had occasion to go to Paris, 

 where they were inspired with a noble emulation on beholding 

 the splendid collections that have been made in that city since 

 the time of BufFon. Before the revolution, Linnaeus, and the 

 phlogistic school of chemistry, reigned triumphant in Germany. 

 The antiphlogistic chemistry (the father of which, Lavoisier, 

 fell himself a victim to revolutionary violence) was afterwards 

 embraced in Germany with great zeal. Priestley, and a 

 number of other discoverers, contributed to the apphcation 

 of the new chemical views of physiology ; and thus, in Ger- 

 many, the scene was completely changed in the beginning of 

 the nineteenth century. The incomparable Werner enlarged 

 mineralogy; and his school, spreading from Freiberg over the 

 whole world, gave to his views an almost canonical authority : 

 but, as the Germans prefer truth to personal considerations, 

 this great man had the mortification of seeing Raumer, and 

 others of his pupils in the neighbourhood of Freiberg, dis- 

 covering facts and relations in direct opposition to his system. 

 Rome de Lisle's experiments in crystallography did not meet 

 Vol. I. — No. 5. f r 



