LETTER TO HIS FATHER. 99 



am sure it will be kindly received ; for at the 

 General Assembly of German naturalists and 

 medical men last September, in Berlin, the 

 part already finished and presented before the 

 Assembly was praised in a manner for which 

 I was quite unprepared. The professors also, 

 to whom I was known, spoke of me there in 

 very favorable terms. 



In the second place there are now prepar- 

 ing two expeditions of natural history, one 

 by M. de Humboldt, with whose reputation 

 you are surely familiar, the same who spent 

 several years in exploring the equatorial re- 

 gions of South America, in company with M. 

 Bonpland. He has been for some years at 

 Berlin, and is now about to start on a journey 

 to the Ural Mountains, the Caucasus, and the 

 confines of the Caspian Sea. Braun, Schim- 

 per, and I have been proposed to him as 

 traveling companions by several of our pro- 

 fessors ; but the application may come too 

 late^ for M. de Humboldt decided upon this 

 journey long ago, and has probably already 

 chosen the naturalists who are to accompany 

 him. How happy I should be to join this ex- 

 pedition to a country the climate of which is 

 by no means unhealthy, under the direction of 

 a man so generally esteemed, to whom the Em- 



