TRANSLATORS PREFACE. VU 



Rose, and the results obtained during their expedition, are 

 recorded by our author in his Fragments Asiatiques, and in 

 his Asie Centrale, and by Rose in his Reise nach dem Oural. 

 If the Asie Centrale had been his only work, constituting, as 

 it does, an epitome of all the knowledge acquired by himself 

 and by former travellers, on the physical geography of North- 

 ern and Central Asia, that work alone would have sufficed 

 to form a reputation of the highest order. 



I proceed to offer a few remarks on the work of which I 

 now present a new translation to the English public, a work 

 intended by its author " to embrace a summary of physical 

 knowledge, as connected with a delineation of the material 

 universe." 



The idea of such a physical description of the universe had, 

 it appears, been present to his mind from a very early epoch. 

 It was a work which he felt he must accomplish, and he 

 devoted almost a lifetime to the accumulation of materials 

 for it. For almost half a century it had occupied his 

 thoughts; and at length in the evening of life, he felt 

 himself rich enough in the accumulation of thought, travel, 

 reading, and experimental research, to reduce into form 

 and reality, the undefined vision that has so long floated 

 before him. The work when completed will form three 

 volumes. The first volume comprises a sketch of all that is 

 at present known of the physical phenomena of the universe : 

 the second comprehends two distinct parts, the first of which 

 treats of the incitements to the study of nature, afforded in 

 descriptive poetry, landscape painting, and the cultivation of 

 exotic plants ; while the second and larger part enters intc 

 the consideration of the different epochs in the progress 01 

 discovery and of the corresponding stages of advance in 

 human civilisation. The third volume, the publication 01 

 which, as M. Humboldt himself informs me in a lettei 

 addressed to my learned friend and publisher, Mr. H. G. Bohn, 

 41 has been somewhat delav^d. owing to the present state 01 



