(214 Professor Hoffmann on the Geological 
This view, which was undoubtedly first started by Hum- 
boldt, is one of the richest in consequences which have been 
brought forward in recent times; and many others were 
linked with it, which at that time occupied the attention of 
this great naturalist. He was at that period, like Leopold Von 
Buch, much engaged in the investigation of the parallel strike 
of mountain chains, and of the strata belonging to them. 
He had previously made the observation respecting this paral- 
lelism in the Fichtelgebirge, mountains which belong to the 
system of the Erzgebirge ; he found it confirmed in the Alps; 
for accident led him to investigate there a mass of mountains, 
whose line of strike had the same direction as that of the 
Erzgebirge; further, he had made a tour to the Rhine, and 
also occupied himself there with the study of its basalts, whose 
neptunian origin he at that time defended with great acuteness. 
He found again there, that the strata of the widely extended 
slate mountains had the same direction as the Alps, and thus 
arrived at the conclusion, that the line of strike of all the 
older strata of mountains, over the whole surface of the 
earth, had an uniform direction from S.W. to N.E. He ex- 
pressed this by saying, that the strata of the mountains formed 
withthe meridian a certain constant angle (of about 52°), and 
he believed that this phenomenon was founded on certain cos- 
mological relations. He was now in the highest degree anxious 
to ascertain if observation would confirm also, in respect to 
the new world, on the continent of America, a fact which 
seemed to him established in regard to the old. It was this, 
as he expressly says, which formed one of the motives that 
caused him to undertake his voyage to America in 1799. 
There he first reached the coast regions of Caraccas and Vene- 
zuela, where, notwithstanding the totally different cireume 
stances, the line of strike of the Alps also prevails in the arrange- 
ment of the mountains, and the strata of which they are com- 
posed. This struck him with wonder; and his first letters sent 
to Europe are therefore full of enthusiasm as to this unexpected. 
discovery, by which what appeared to him a general law of 
nature in the formation of the globe, seemed to be confirmed 
in aremarkable manner. He intended to make this subject 
the object of an extensive examination and investigation after 
