392 APPENDIX. 



these productions. He has now arrived at an age when he begins 

 to exhibit some gallantry. He wears two long steel watch chains, 

 joins in the dance, and makes himself agreeable to visitors in his 

 mother's boudoir he begins, in short, to play a part in life. He 

 reminds one strongly of his father.' 



2. VISIT TO ENGLAND IN 1790. Page 91. 



Fragment of Journal of a Tour with Forster. From the Radowitz 

 Collection of Autographs, in the Royal Library at Berlin, No. 

 6,255. 



From a crowd of notes and comments made by Humboldt upon 

 Somersetshire, Gloucestershire, &.c., we shall only subjoin a few 

 extracts as proof of the wide range of his observations : 



* Wiltshire. Many cloth manufactories in Wiltshire, Gloucester- 

 shire, and Somersetshire, especially at Trowbridge and Bradford, 

 in the neighbourhood of Bath. In these south-western counties 

 the sheep are shorn twice in the year, while in the counties of 

 Leicester, Lincoln, Warwick, they are usually shorn but once. 

 The high price of wool in the year 1790 has been ascribed to the 

 establishment of the cloth manufactories. The highest price given 

 for Welsh wool was Is. 3d. per Ib. ; for South Down, Is. 2d. ; for 

 Norfolk wool, Is. \d. ; and for the wool of the western districts, 8^d. 

 (Upon the breeding of sheep in England, and the antiquity of the 

 wool trade woollen cloths having been made at Winchester for the 

 Roman emperors see Report of the Committee, by D. Anderson.) 

 The dyers all crowd to the Avon, as the waters of that river are 

 peculiarly favourable for their art. There is still great need of 

 accurate chemical investigation into the influence of various kinds 

 of water upon the processes of dyeing and brewing. It is quite as 

 unreasonable to ascribe the superiority of English beer and English 

 dyes to the quality of the water in England, as it is premature to 

 deny the influence of the vapours of the atmosphere in chemical 

 processes rendered complicated by the presence of fermentation, 

 which is of a nature too subtle to admit of the application of 

 any test. 



' Chippenham was the residence of Alfred the Great, who in 884 

 expelled the Danes from London and Rochester. At that period the 

 west of England appears to have been most under cultivation, while 

 at the present day the east seems to be the most highly cultivated. 

 Was not the former condition of things a more natural arrangement 

 than the present, seeing that the entrance to the Bristol Channel is 

 more convenient than that of the Thames the west of England is 



