OFFICIAL EMPLOYMENT. 139 



damp of the mines, and in frequent journeys in the wild 

 country of the Fichtelgebirge, was not allowed during its 

 three weeks' duration to interfere with his zealous activity. 

 6 You will doubtless scold me, my dear friend,' he writes 

 further, ' yet how can I fulfil my duty here without exposing 

 myself to such risks? You ask if I am engaged on any 

 literary work at present. Yes, I am, and, as usual, on many 

 subjects at once ; but that which interests me most deeply, 

 " Experiments on the Excitability of the Nerves and Muscles," 

 is too elaborate for me to give it you in detail. I am also 

 engaged upon an important work on geology, for which, 

 however, I have as yet no title. I may perhaps call it " Eesults 

 of my Observations," or " Results of my Travels in Germany 

 and Elsewhere." My idea of the subject is this : Geolo- 

 gical descriptions of entire districts, accompanied with well- 

 arranged flora, are merely vehicles for bringing before the 

 world personal observations ; such works always contain much 

 unimportant information, which is not sufficiently accurate 

 for the purposes of a mineralogical geography. The hurried 

 nature of my journeys renders it quite as impossible for 

 me to give a complete flora as a good geological descrip- 

 tion: I therefore remark only what is new, and state it in 

 short aphorisms of half-a-dozen lines, after the manner of the 

 following notes: Granite Boulders. I found some recently six 

 feet in diameter ; stratified granite is everywhere the oldest 

 form of granite ; compass-observations as to the dip of the 

 strata ; relative age of Franconian and Bohemian syenite ; 

 beds of alum in almond stone. . . . You shall certainly see 

 the manuscript before it is published. However rhapsodical 

 it may appear, I take the trouble to work out every entry 

 with the accuracy I should if it were a monograph. 



< You are aware that I am quite mad enough to be engaged 



handlung iiber die Producte des Mineralreichs in den konigl. preussischen 

 Staaten ' (Berlin, 1786), where in p. 110 be thus speaks of the margraviates 

 of Anspach and Bayreuth : ( Formerly mines were worked here successfully, 

 both for gold and copper. The mines, however, were deserted, because it 

 was thought a greater profit could be obtained from the direct sale of the 

 timber. In those days there existed in the two margraviates thirteen 

 smelting furnaces, where in one campaign of thirty-nine weeks 3,042 tons 

 of excellent pig-iron were produced.' 



