THWAKTED PLANS. 215 



instituted with too much accuracy, and give promise of exerting 

 too great an influence upon animal physics for me to have given 

 expression to such an opinion. It could not therefore have been 

 your labours, which I hold in the highest esteem, and which I 

 contemplate with renewed pleasure every day, to which I 

 alluded in my letter to citizen Van Mons. Pray rest assured 

 that I value the indefatigable investigators of nature too 

 highly as the true interpreters of her mysteries, as, in a word, 

 the true physicists, among whom your name is already so 

 distinguished, ever to have thought of calumniating your 

 efforts, damping your ardour, or confounding you with the 

 dangerous inventors of hypotheses.' 



In the beginning of June we find the entire Humboldt 

 family established at Dresden, in company with Von Haften 

 and Fischer ; the latter of whom had, in the meanwhile, taken 

 his degree as Doctor of Medicine. Here William von Hum- 

 boldt, through his intercourse with Korner, the friend of 

 Schiller, was introduced into the congenial society of Count 

 von Kessler, the Prussian ambassador, and of Adelung, the 

 librarian and distinguished philologist, while Alexander, who 

 had recently become possessed of a sextant by Hadley, was 

 familiarising himself, with the assistance of Ko'hler, curator of 

 the Philosophical Museum, in the use of astronomical and 

 meteorological instruments, and those employed in geodesy and 

 hypsometry. The fifth volume of his ' Journal ' contains whole 

 pages of figures, the results of the observations which he 

 carried on in and around Dresden, Pillnitz, Konigstein, Toplitz, 

 and Prague, and in letters from Salzburg he mentions Ko'hler 

 in grateful terms as his teacher and friend. 1 



This sojourn at Dresden proved of the highest value to 

 Humboldt in preparation for his subsequent travels, since 

 here was preserved the extensive collection of Spanish and 

 American minerals in the possession of Baron von Rackwitz, 

 which he studied with much interest. It was probably through 

 the acquaintances he made while at Dresden that he was after- 

 wards able to secure the interest of Baron von Forell, ambas- 

 sador from Saxony at the Spanish court, in furtherance of his 

 expedition to America. 



1 ( Allgemeine geographische Epheraeriden,' vol. ii. p. 267. 



