CENTRAL ASIA. 429 



the ethnographical and geological portions of the subject 

 in the ancient Zend books, while Julien and Klaproth 

 devoted themselves to physical researches in Chinese, in 

 which language both were profound scholars. The result 

 of their labours was fused by Humboldt with his own, 

 and published at Paris in 1843, in three octavo volumes. 

 •The title of the new work was " Central Asia," and the 

 chief subjects that it treated of, were the mountain chains 

 and climatology of that region. 



" The result of the Asiatic journey," says Professor 

 Klencke, " which Humboldt has given in his work on 

 Central Asia, are very various, and cannot yet be com- 

 bined under one common head. The most important 

 new investigations which have here led to further 

 inquiries, are the treatise on the mean altitude of the 

 great continent of the earth, on the table-lands of the 

 interior of Asia, on the mountain .system of Kuenlun, 

 on the depression of the Caspian Sea and its environs, 

 below the level of the ocean ; also historico-geographical 

 investigations into the former course of the Kiver Oxus, 

 and communications on the boundary of perpetual snow. 

 Besides this, the work contains plates, which give the 

 mean temperature of more than three hundred places, 

 and besides the voluminous geognostic revelations of the 

 Ural, the volcanoes, the beds of gold, and on the pro- 

 duce of the gold washings in the Ural districts, and in 

 Siberia, on the diamonds in the mountains, there are 

 explanatory essays by Stanislaus Julien, on Chinese his- 

 torical sources, additions by Klaproth, on volcanoes, 

 notes by Valenciennes, on the sea-dogs of the Caspian 

 Sea, &c. The work abounds in important results, and 

 includes a chart of Central Asia, drawn by Humboldt 



