148 ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 



gress (ReichsfriedenspacifLcationsverhandlungstractate^while 

 standing at the table, by the entrance among the diplomatic 

 dignitaries of Herr von Humboldt the invited guest, a whole 

 hour behind his time, heated with haste, in boots and travelling 

 dress, fresh from, a tour among the mountains of Baden. The 

 Count however put the assembly completely au fait by a shrug 

 of the shoulders and the whispered apology, "A philosopher."' 1 



On his return home in November, 1795, Humboldt resumed 

 his occupations among the mountains at Steben, Lauenstein, 

 Groldkronach, and Arzberg near Wunsiedel, till the spring of 

 1796, and amid the various distractions that beset him, some 

 of an annoying, some of a pleasing character, (among the latter 

 was a grand ball given by him at the old castle on the marriage 

 of his friend Von Haften), 'there poured in upon him from the 

 minister a flood of work of all kinds,' which took him for a 

 fortnight to Anspach in company with Herr von Schuckmann. 

 It was about this time that he received the distressing news of 

 the painful and incurable illness of his mother, 



In the midst of these multifarious occupations, he laboured 

 unremittingly on two elaborate works widely different in cha- 

 1 racte*, the one on geology, the other on physiology. 



Some particulars on the subject of the first-named work may 

 be gathered lorn his unpublished letters; in one of these 

 Humboldt writes to Werner at Freiberg as follows : ' I am 

 working uninterruptedly at a great geological work which is to 

 appear under the title " On the Formation of the Crust of the 

 Earth in Central Europe, especially with regard to the Disposi- 

 tion of Strata in Mountain Masses." I intend to furnish a 

 general description of the stratifications from the Light-house 

 at\renoa to Warsaw and Segeberg (?) in one direction, and from 

 the Forest of Ardennes and Chalons to Ojcow in anotlSr. I 

 wish to show that the bearing and dip of the strata have no 

 reference to the direction or declivity of a mountain range, nor 

 to the waste of its material, but are connected with something 

 of much wider significance, and that in all the mountains com- 

 prising the great European chain from Savoy to the Tyrol 

 which I have traversed on foot, although the direction 3 4 

 and declivity are from north to west, the bearing and dip 

 1 Bitter von Lang, ' Memoiren/ vol. i. p. 329. 



