24 LEOPOLD VON BUCU. 



But sick or well, Ilumboldt's studies went on. He con- 

 tinued his experiments on galvanism, turning his atten- 

 tion chiefly to the laws of muscular irritation, and tha 

 disposition of the nerves of living animals when under 

 the galvanic influence. He wrote a work on the subject, 

 " Experiments on Nervous and Muscular Irritation," and 

 sent it to his old teacher, Blumenbach, who published it 

 for him, with notes and comments of his own. 



The brothers went to Berlin in May to settle the family 

 inheritance, previous to making a journey together into 

 Italy. William's share was the old castle at Tegel, Alex- 

 ander's the estate of Kingenwalde, in Neumark. He 

 sold it to the poet Franz Yon Kleist, to raise the neces- 

 sary funds for his great journey. 



The unsettled state of affairs ia Italy preventing the 

 contemplated journey, William and his family determined 

 to proceed to Paris. Alexander went with them as far 

 as Saltzburg, where he was induced to stay awhile by 

 his friend Leopold Yon Buch. Buch, who had just pub- 

 lished a scientific work, " Outlines of a Mineralogical De- 

 scription of Landeck," had been, as the reader remem- 

 bers, one of his fellow-students in the Mineralogical 

 Academy at Freyberg, and was like him a believer in 

 the Neptunic theory of Werner. Humboldt afterwards 

 called him " the greatest geologist of the age." A scientific 

 trip was proposed, and the pair started off on foot, armed 

 with their geological hammers, and a change of linen. 

 They travelled through several cantons of Saltzburg, and 

 Styria, and reached the Tyrolese Alps. While on this 

 Bohemian trip Humboldt made the acquaintance of Lord 

 Bristol, an English nobleman, who had visited the coasts 

 of Greece and Hlyria, and had planned an expedition 



