AS RELATED TO INTELLECT. 4:9 



so marked a degree, that their true place can never 

 be lost sight of, nor their value underrated. 



In the grandeur of its results, Geology is, accord- 

 ing to Sir John Herschel himself, second only to 

 his own favorite study, Astronomy. Humboldt, 

 whose range of knowledge is certainly equal to that 

 of any man who ever lived, and knows well what 

 studies are requisite to breadth and completeness of 

 view, has placed the study of an humbler branch of 

 Natural History on equality with the sublime 

 study of the heavens, for securing accuracy and in- 

 tellectual power. 



" The Astronomer," says he, " who by the aid of 

 the heliometer, or a double-refracting prism, deter- 

 mines the diameter of planetary bodies, who meas- 

 ures patiently, year after year, the meridian altitude 

 and the relative distances of stars, or who seeks a 

 telescopic comet in a group of nebulae, does not feel 

 his imagination more excited and this is the very 

 guarantee of the precision of his labors than the 

 botanist who counts the divisions of the calyx, or 

 the number of stamens in a flower, or examines the 

 connected or the separate teeth of the peristoma 



