Prof. Cotia’s Eulogy on Von Buch. 3 
three years. Here it was, that an intimate and long enduring 
friendship was formed between him, Alexander v. Humboldt, 
and Carl Freisleben. After the completion of his mining stud- 
jes, he it was who most of all next to von Humboldt gave origin 
to that beautiful saying of d’Aubuisson de Voisin, that “* Werner’s 
disciples scattered themselves over every land and interrogated 
Nature as to her import from pole to pole.” He also it was, how- 
ever, who first of all brought back a negative answer from these 
wanderings. He went forth into the worid a true and convinced 
disciple ; soon, however, fact after fact accumulated before his 
clear vision, till he was convinced, at first, doubtless, painfully 
convinced, that his much loved master must have erred in one 
fundamental point. 
We all are subject to error; and those who come after us will 
certainly know more, and know it much better, than we. It can 
therefore on that account never be made a subject of reproach to 
a disciple, that he has given up the system of his master from 
conviction ; and it were also the worst way of honoring great 
men, to say nothing of its opposition to the spirit of true science, 
were we blindly to cling to all of their errors. On the contrary 
the acknowledgment of an error, or the discovery of a new 
truth on the part of the disciple, is ever a proof of the ability of 
bo The master has awakened a spirit of independent investi- 
gation—the disciple, by that, has laid down a proof of his own 
impartiality and of his independence. And never can a disciple 
m such a case act with more delicacy and forbearance against a 
master than did v. Buch, who never meanly attacked the odd, but 
on the contrary presented the new only with more convincing 
Wer, & 
L. v. Buch wandered over,—and that too mostly on foot, as it 
behooves a naturalist to do,—one after another, not only all the 
Mountain chains of Germany, the’ Alps from Nice to Vienna, the 
Appenines from Turin to their most southern spurs, the hilly 
chains of England and the highlands of Scotland, but he was 
almost as much at home in France asin Germany. He traversed 
again and again the Pyrenees, climbed the summit of Aitna, and 
the sublime Peak of Teneriffe. He had early wandered among 
the crystalline mountains of Scandinavia, and late in life even, 
When almost an old man, he wandered all over the Highlands of 
Greece, till then better known to the philologist than to the 
geologist. Everywhere, even where he only transiently tarried, 
he left behind him, as v. Humboldt says, luminous and radiant 
footsteps. 
_ ‘Thus was he ever, year after year, up to his advanced old age 
to the very end of his days, on journeys. In eariy summer he 
Wandered forth, an y with the storms of autumn did 
turn to his neat ¢ oor study on t of the: 
ve 
