420 CLIMATOLOGY OF ASIA. 



from travelled Tartars, Bulgarians, and Taschktnts, as 

 well as from the Eussian officers. The inner, central 

 part of xlsia was not, as had been supposed, an immense 

 agglomeration of mountains, nor an uninteiTupted table- 

 land, for Humboldt established that this part of the 

 world was crossed from east to west by four mountain- 

 systems (by the Altai, which ends westward in the Kir-- 

 ghiz district, by the Himmelsberg, by Kuenlun, and by 

 the Himalaya), which have exercised authenticated in- 

 fluence on the historical migrations of nations. And 

 thus Humboldt discovered a volcanic territory in the 

 centre of Asia, which is one thousand to one thousand 

 four hundred miles distant from the ocean, and which 

 presents a surface of two thousand five hundred geo- 

 graphical miles. 



The second volume of the " Asiatic Fragments" con- 

 tains, besides the description of the twelve routes, "Obser- 

 vations on the Temperature and the Hygrometric Con- 

 dition of the Atmosphere in some portions of Asia, and 

 Investigations into the Causes of the Deflection of the 

 Isothermic Lines" — namelj", the imaginary lines which 

 unite all points on the earth of equal mean temperature. 

 In this volume we have important contributions to a cli-' 

 matic knowledge of that countrj^, and in it are indicated 

 also the causes which produce the deflection of the iso- 

 thermic lines from the parallel circles. These results, 

 based on numerous astronomic and masjnetic measure- 

 ments, throw an entirely new light on this branch of 

 science, and are again closely connected with the results 

 of the former American journey, as Humboldt had there 

 also construed the terrestrial laws from similar pheno- 

 mena in the old and new world." 



