THE 
EDINBURGH NEW 
PHILOSOPHICAL JOURNAL. 
On the Geological Investigations and Writings of Baron Alex- 
ander von Humboldt. By the late Professor Freprrick 
Horrmann of Berlin. 
ALExanDER von Humezorpr attended the Mining Academy 
of Freyberg simultaneously with Leopold von Buch, and, like 
him, he not only fully adopted Werner’s views, but also en- 
deavoured to disseminate and confirm them by his own per- 
sonal observations. After finishing his studies,* his first years 
were devoted to mining, and from 1795 to 1797 he was Ober- 
Bergmeister (Superior Director of the Mines) in the Fichtel- 
gebirge. Among the geognostical investigations which he 
prosecuted at that period of his life, the discoveries regarding 
the magnetic properties of certain mountain rocks are remark- 
able, and more especially his examination of the magnetism of 
the serpentine of the Heidberg near Zell, which attracted the 
attention of naturalists. He afterwards made his first journey 
in the Alps along with Von Buch, and then accompanied him 
* Baron Humboldt was born at Berlin on the 14th September 1769, and 
studied at Gottingen and Frankfort on the Oder. Te also received instruc- 
tions from Biisch at the Commercial Academy of Hamburg, and in 1790 he 
made a journey, in company with G. Forster, to the Rhine, Holland, and 
England. The first essay by him with which we are acquainted, is an in- 
genious dissertation on the basalts of the Rhine, dedicated to Forster, and 
published at Brunswick in 1790. It is entitled Mineralogische Beobachtungen 
iiber einige Basalte gn Tthein. Edit. 
VOL, XXXII. NO. LXIV.—APRIL 1842. P 
