324 WORKS JM BLISHED IN 1808. 



As Humboldt laid out his works with groat regularity, 



the reader may suppose that the same regularity attended 

 their publication : but it was not so Not all those that 

 related to, and completed one branch of science, appeared 

 at one time : they were published as they were written. 

 It could not well have been otherwise when so many 

 hands were at work. 



To know the years in which Humboldt's books were 

 published, is to know the nature of his employment at 

 that time. With this clue before us we shall trace him 

 during his life in Paris. He came thither, the reader 

 will remember, in the autumn of 1807. 1808 was a busy 

 year with him. It witnessed the publication of two edi- 

 tions of his "Aspects of Nature," one in German, the 

 other in French; of a work on latitude and longitude, in 

 Latin ; of a work on electric fish, in German, and of the 

 first volume of his work on the equinoctial plants. This 

 last publication, an immense folio, with pages two feet, or 

 thereabouts, in length, was the first of a series of works 

 of the same size and kind. They were mostly written in 

 Latin, some by Humboldt, others by Bonpland and 

 Kunth. 



In the preface to the first volume of "Equinoctial 

 Plants," which preface, by the way, was written before 

 Ilumboldt visited his brother William at Albano, (it is 

 dated at Paris, March 1, 1805) he speaks of the labours 

 to which Bonpland and himself were devoted during 

 their five years' travels, and says that botanical researches 

 were those with which they oceupied themselves most 

 assiduously. A great part of the countries through which 

 they passed had never been visited by botanists. Don 

 Jose Celestino Mutis, director of the botanical expedi- 



