XX FROM NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR, 



are embodied in a series of bulky volumes, admirable in their careful 

 thoroughness. We rank him rather as one of the forerunners of 

 Humboldt than as a zoologist, for his services to ethnology and 

 geology were of great importance. He pondered over the results of 

 his explorations, and many of his questionings in regard to geogra- 

 phical distribution, the influence of climate, the variation of animals, 

 and similar problems, were prophetic of the light which was soon to 

 dawn on biological science. 



Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was undoubtedly one of 

 the greatest naturalists of the century which his life well nigh 

 covered. Geologist, botanist, zoologist, and more, he was almost 

 the last of the all-round naturalists. In this indeed lay his weak- 

 ness as well as his strength, for great breadth of view is apt to 

 imply a lack of precision as to details. In boyhood, " when life ", 

 as he says, " appears an unlimited horizon ", he had strong desires 

 after travel, which were in part gratified by excursions with George 

 Forster and by Swiss explorations with the sagacious old geographer 

 Leopold von Buch. These, however, only whetted his enthusiasm 

 for journeys with a larger radius. At length, after many dis- 

 couragements, he sailed in 1799 from Corunna, with Aim^ Bon- 

 pland as companion, and spent five years in exploring the equinoc- 

 tial regions of the New World. The full record of his voyage one 

 cannot be expected to read, for there are about thirty volumes of it 

 in the complete edition, but what we should all know is Humboldt's 

 Personal Narrative, in which the chief results of his explorations 

 are charmingly set forth. Later in life (1829) he went with Ehren- 

 berg and Rose to North Asia, and his crowning work was the 

 publication of Cosmos (1845-58), which originated in a series of 

 lectures delivered in the University of Berlin. In front of that 

 building his statue now stands, along with that of his not less 

 famous brother Wilhelm. 



We think of Humboldt not so much as an early explorer of 

 tropical America, nor because he described the habits of the condor 

 and made observations on electric eels, nor because he furnished 

 Cuvier and Latreille with many new specimens, but rather as a 

 magnificent type of the naturalist-traveller, observant, widely in- 



