26 G-uyot on Carl Bitter. 



nious connection that has been established between it and the 

 sister sciences. To these great minds also is traced, as to its 

 main source, that reform movement which has impressed its 

 stamp upon all the geographical literature of the day in Ger- 

 many, has penetrated into every school, and the mighty flood 

 of which, flowing over its primitive boundaries, has covered 

 Scandinavia, Switzerland, now reaches England, and, I am 

 happy to say, is making rapid progress in this country. 



A conviction so universal, so deeply rooted in the pop- 

 ular consciousness, especially in that of the German nation^ 

 which reared them and received their immediate teachings, of 

 that people endowed with so keen a power of appreciation of 

 all kinds of scientific merit, can but correspond to a reality. 

 That great progress cannot be denied. It is evident to the 

 eye of every one who has had an opportunity of comparing 

 the condition of geographical knowledge at the present day 

 with that of half a century ago ; that is, before and after the 

 period of the activity and controlling influence of Humboldt 

 and of Eitter. But what seems less evident, less distinctly 

 established in the minds of many, is the character of the 

 peculiar element of progress contributed to geographical science 

 by each of these two great Reformers. 



The brilliant services, so recently discussed before you, 

 rendered to the science of Terrestrial Physics by Humboldt 

 the geographer and geologist, by Humboldt the physicist and 

 meteorologist, by Humboldt the botanist and zoologist, by 

 Humboldt the scientific discoverer of the New World and the 

 experienced scientific traveller in Central Asia, by Humboldt 

 the author of the Cosmos, are present to the minds of all. 

 The physics of the Globe, that noble science, last born, but 

 not least, among her sister sciences, owes him, as I have said 

 elsewhere, its present shape and its best results. This remains 

 his chief, his most glorious title to the gratitude of the scien- 

 tific, and his labors mark the beginning of a new era, from 

 which the knowledge of our physical globe, as a grand harmo- 

 nious whole, will have to date its future steps in the career of 

 progress. 



How warmly Bitter acknowledged the high merit and 

 admired the researches of Humboldt, how fully he appreci- 

 ated their value, and joyfully hailed every new result obtained 

 by his ingenuity, appears, among others, in a page of the 

 Introduction to his great book, the "Erclkunde," especially 

 devoted to Humboldt's labors, and in which he declares that 

 without such a foundation as that furnished by the works of 



