^)S Analysis of Scientific Books: 



through ten pages of porphyry or thonschiefer, it is all to he 

 .done over again ; and when it is done, we ask ourselves what it 

 is all about. 



In truth, we did expect to have selected some single passage 

 as an example ; hut, as far as the 240th page at least, we have 

 turned backwards and forwards in vain, and cannot extract one 

 sole paragraph which comprises an entire within itself. The 

 author seems always breathless with matter, and the matter is 

 itself breath, wind. A single fact, well detailed and simply 

 stated, and, if the author ever did reason, reasoned on, would 

 have been worth whole pages of Conradswalde, Prausnitz, Mon- 

 dragon, Goldlauter, Schwartz, Kiffhauser, Caxamarca, and the 

 ten thousand other names which dazzle our eyes at every sentence, 

 and transport us, in an instant, from Saxony to Chili, as if we 

 had been sitting on Prince Houssain's carpet. 



We really cannot see the purpose of all this geography and 

 authority, unless it be to show that M. Humboldt has got a map 

 of the world at his elbow, and is a great traveller. Cannot he see 

 that this is nothing more than an affair of Habitats, and that when 

 once it is ascertained that the general relations of rocks are ana- 

 logous or similar throughout the globe, it is unnecessary to tor- 

 ment us with every spot on his two hemispheres. The young 

 hotanist fancies he has performed a vast feat in science, when he 

 has published, in some journal, a list of the plants in the king's park 

 at Edinburgh, or in Norfolk. And it is a very fit occupation for a 

 philosopher in the " Lovely Science." But that granite grows in the 

 Fichtelgebirge, and at Tehuilotepetec, and that it consists, in both, 

 of mica, felspar, and quartz, or of more mica and less felspar, is not 

 now very marvellous information ; and it is still less necesary that 

 we should be told of every " gisement" in M. Humboldt's hemi- 

 spheres, and of all and every variety^ and variation of every thing 

 that he has seen, or not seen. Were any general laws deduced, 

 we could understand a purpose in all this ; but, as it is, it is 

 egregious trifling, and trifling which pretends to knowledge. 

 Foxes grow in Leicestershire and in Greenland, so they do in 

 India, and, for ought we care, they may grow upon Popocatepetl ; 

 but in what way does the science of zoology profit by being told 

 that their tails are an inch longer in Mexico than Bengal, or that 

 they are less odoriferous in Norfolk than at Santa Fe da Bogota. 



The article Porphyry, positively dances before our eyes ; and, 

 what with transition, and dolerite, and trachyte, and all else of 

 this never-ending subject, we are utterly unable to conjecture what 

 he means to prove, or what he means. Ten sentences might pos- 

 sibly have told his meaning : they would have told ours ; but he 

 is not a man of ten sentences, and if he ever meant any thing e 

 has lost sight of it, suffocated under the rubbish of his talk. 



But we have arrived at the 360th page, and still we have heen 



