Alexander von Humboldt. 9 
was the circle of the sciences. He worked hard and observed 
closely ; and, what in a young observer of nature is of the high- 
est importance, he reduced to order his observations and wrote 
them out. During his short year with Werner, the parent of 
the Neptunian theory, he found time to collect and describe the 
cryptogamous —— he found growing far down in the mines 
e made drawings of them, wrote out their nat- 
gen to his old friend and teacher, Blumenbach, who soon after 
returned it, edited with his own notes, and backed with the seal 
of his approbation. The work,* a handsome quarto volume, 
saw the light the next year, at Berlin, it being his second book, 
at the age of twenty-three. The second ea of it, Aphorisms 
on the chemical physiology of vegetables, he found of great use to 
him in his observations in America. 
This same year he accepted an official position under govern- 
ment in order that he might have influence and opportunities 
and travels to India, America, Africa the Islands, but 
generally to the want of variety of knowledge in insu- 
lated branches of na Th tions of 
istory. e great Ex 
eurieu in 1768-69, of Bougainville in 1766-69, of Cooke 1768- 
1780 were familiar to him as household words, as were also af- 
terward those of Vancouver, La Pérouse and d’Entrecasteaux ; 
but all these, though they gave ample accounts of the oceans, 
their islands and their coasts, yet left him unsatisfied as to the 
vast interiors of countries and continents. They developed 
* Flor Fripercensis Specimen Plantas cryptogamicas presertim subterrane- 
iy Plates, 4° Basalinl 1793. The spo beaten pba year, 1794 were tr 
into Goose G. Fischer, with additions by J. Hedwig, and a Preface by G. F. 
Ludwig, and published at Liepzig in 8vo. 
