XXX PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



life; Cuvier > contemplating in his rich museum the modern and 

 ancient forms of life, established the science of Palaeontology ; while 

 Humboldt, universal in genius and cosmopolitan in feeling, made it 

 his chief delight 



"ire per omnes 



Terrasque tractusque maris coeluraque profundum." 



The great Prussian was not specially nor even principally a geolo- 

 gist ; yet, amidst the yast labours of his active life, he found many 

 occasions of exercising the precepts of Werner, his early teacher at 

 .Freyberg, who also inspired bis fellow-labourer Yon Buch. 



The special essays in which Humboldt records his own researches 

 are too numerous, and embrace too wide a range of subjects to be 

 ^discussed on this occasion. One of the earliest fruits of his Prey- 

 berg studies was a mineralogical notice of a basalt on the Ehine 

 (1790) ; at another time he observed the diamonds and malachite of 

 the Ural Mountains; he entered into the question of the ossiferous 

 caverns (1817), studied the footprints of Hildberghausen, examined 

 Infusoria, and reported to the Royal Academy of Sciences on a Table 

 of Organic Remains (1825). 



In the Essay on the Superposition of Rocks (1823), the principal 

 phenomena which had come under Humboldt's personal observation 

 during his travels in the two hemispheres are placed in comparison. 

 We are indebted to him for a curious method of pasigraphical nota- 

 tion, adapted for recording and systematizing local observations on 

 -the position of rocks. 



The study of volcanos and mountain-chains, in all their relations, 

 geological, chemical, and meteorological — the contemplation of the 

 living wonders of nature in relation to the distribution of land and 

 sea and the ranges of climate, — researches of this order, charac- 

 teristic of the mind of Humboldt, are well typified by the beautiful 

 work entitled ' Aspects of Nature,' including considerations on de- 

 serts, the physiognomy of plants, the cataracts of the Orinoco, and 

 the structure and action of volcanos. In the great work which 

 agreeably occupied the latter years of his life, and brought before 

 him the whole system of nature, geology finds the early and honour- 

 able place which it ought to occupy in the scale of natural science. 

 The views collected in Humboldt's ' Kosmos ' on the physical con- 

 stitution of the earth, on earthquakes and volcanic phenomena, and 

 on the origin and metamorphism of rocks, are extremely instructive, 

 and will be perused with pleasure and profit even by those who 

 prefer a different explanation of some of the phenomena. Birth, 

 September 14, 1769; death, May 6, 1859. 



To the Archduke John of Austria geology is indebted not only 

 for the countenance which a person in his high position could afford 

 it, but for the special diligence and intelligent zeal with which he 

 advanced the geological ■ survey of the extensive and interesting 

 countries under the sway of the Imperial House. Simple and un- 

 ostentatious in his tastes, more at home among the Styrian moun- 

 tains than in the palaces of Vienna, he was always occupied: in 



