360 ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 



It is not, however, to be wished that Humboldt had lived to 

 witness these and similar revolutions in the scientific world by 

 which he might have been tempted to remodel his great work. 

 The admirable arrangement of the first two volumes almost 

 forbids the contemplation of such a design. It woiild probably 

 only have led to the introduction into the specific portions 

 of further additions, elucidations, and modifications, by which 

 in the end nothing conclusive would have been accomplished. 

 The only subject for regret is that the terrestrial portion has 

 not been fully brought up to the state of scientific knowledge 

 in 1859: much valuable detail might have been introduced 

 upon hydrology, meteorology, and the distribution of organic 

 life upon the earth's surface. Humboldt had himself intended, 

 in case of necessity, to commit the completion of the work 

 into the hands of some of his scientific friends. ' It shows an 

 egregious want of foresight,' he wrote on October 26, 1851, in 

 announcing to Gauss the preparations for the fourth volume, 

 6 for me at my pre- Adamite age to think of a new volume ; but 

 in the event of my death, my friends will be able not only to 

 compile the table of contents, but also to complete the fourth 

 part by additional matter on geology, meteorology, and the 

 geography of plants.' There is every reason to rejoice that 

 this plan was not carried out. The index might possibly have 

 been compiled equally well by Buschmann from Humboldt's 

 notes ; but the work Itself was, as we have seen, too strongly im- 

 pressed with the individuality of the author for it to have been 

 completed by any other hand. Nowhere perhaps has the 

 individuality of the venerable author been more strongly im- 

 pressed than in the introduction to the fifth volume, in which 

 the acknowledgments of literary favours are measured out 

 with a minuteness suitable only to a preface, and in which is 

 included the extravagant testimony to the achievements of 

 Buschmann, dictated no doubt by a good-humoured gratitude, 

 since, whatever his merits may have been, he could have contri- 

 buted nothing to the real value of 6 Cosmos.' The same tender 

 affection to his brother which led him to close the ' Survey of 

 Nature ' with a passage from his writings, instigated him also 

 to conclude his great work with the following quotation from 

 the elegy 6 In der Sierra Morena ' : 



