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- 



