Prof. Agassiz’s Eulogy on Humboldt. oo 
with an ardor - wes eats which is untiring; and he is not 
anxious to ap o have done it all himself. Oltmanns is 
called to his ai to aco his astronomical observations, and his 
barometrical measurements by which he has determined the 
geographical position of 700 different points and the altitude of 
more than 450 of them. 
The large collection of plants which Bonpland had begun to 
illustrate, but of which his desire of seeing the sacs again has 
prevented the completion he entrusts to Kunth. He has also 
brought home animals of different “re and distributes them 
among the most eminent zoologists of the day. To Cuvier he 
entrusts the investigation of that remarkable Batrachian, the 
Aceolotel,—the mode of development of which is still unknown, 
but which remains in its adult state in a condition similar to 
that of the tadpole of the frog during the earlier period of its 
life. Latreille sete ibes the insects, and Valenciennes the shells 
and the fish re an yet to show that he might have done the 
work himself, ie a memoir on the anatomical structure 
another upon the “topi a a of America, and another 
climatology. The first work upon that hae is a dissertation 
on the geographical distribution of plants, published in 1817. 
Many botanists and travellers had obse: that in different 
parts of the world there are plants not found in others, and that 
there is a certain arrangement in that distribution; but Hum- 
boldt was the first to see that this ees is connected with 
the temperature of the air as well as with the altitudes of the 
surface on which they grow, and he systematized his researches 
into a general exposition of the laws by which the distribution 
of plants is regulated. Connected wit a romero ~ made 
those extensive investigations into the mean temperature of a 
large number of places on the surface of the gett: eh I led to 
the drawing of those isothermal lines so important in their, — 
ence in shaping physical geography and givi feng altered 
ode of representing natural phenomena. 
we had no graphic <a of com — natural ser 
ena which made them easily cotenesnet le, even to minds of 
moderate cultivation. He has done that in a — Ww has 
_ Circulated information more extensively, an and brought it to the 
4 — more clearly than it could have been di a any 
a er 
+3 
a4 
