14 TRIBUTE TO HIS MEMOKY. 



accompanied Captain Cook as a naturalist in that great 

 navigator's second voyage round the world. After- 

 wards professor of natural history in Ilesse Casscll, and 

 at Wilna, he was now spending the summer with his 

 wife at the house of his father-in-law, Heyne. He had 

 written several works on natural history, geography, 

 philosophy, and politics, besides a history of his voyage 

 round the world. Writing of Forster in. 1844, more 

 than fifty years after his death, Humboldt paid the 

 following tribute to his memory : , 



" Through him began a new era of scientific voyages, 

 the aim of which was to arrive at a knowledge of the 

 comparative history and geography of different countries. 

 Gifted with delicate esthetic feelings, and retaining a 

 vivid impression of the pictures with which Tahiti and 

 the other then happy islands of the- Pacific had filled his 

 imagination, as in recent times that of Charles Darwin, 

 George Forster was the first to depict in pleasing colors 

 the changing stages of vegetation, the relations of climate 

 and of articles of food in their influence on the civiliza- 

 tion of mankind, according to differences of original de- 

 scent and habitation. All that can give truth, individu- 

 ality, and distinctiveness to the delineation of exotic 

 nature is united in his works. We trace, not only in his 

 admirable description of Cook's second voyage of dis- 

 covery, but still more in his smaller writings, the germ 

 of that richer fruit which has since matured." 



Such was George Forster, who, after Campe, was the 

 chief instrument in determining the future life of Alex* 

 ander Von Humboldt. They were fast friends during 

 the short period of their intercourse in Gottingen, and 

 all the time they could spare from their customary 



