4 Biography of Baron Leopold von Buck. 



were no doubt requisite than the observer could meet with 

 on the soil of Silesia. Hence, along with much that is excel- 

 lent, we perceive this tendency to swear in verba magistri in 

 his " Versuch einer geognostischen Beschreibung von Schle- 

 sien," which shortly afterwards appeared, along with a, for the 

 time, exceedingly advanced geognostical map of that country. 

 If, in this work, it is still the waves which have formed 

 the gneiss and the mica slate, and which could deposit them 

 only in certain places and in certain directions, on the other 

 hand, everything lying without the range of these theoretical 

 views is expressed with such denniteness and perspicuity, 

 that it can, with the utmost facility, be brought into harmony 

 with the better theory which we have now attained ; and this 

 is assuredly an excellent proof of the correctness, fidelity, 

 and impartiality of the observation. 



In the year 1797, Buch met his friend and fellow-student 

 Humboldt at Salzburg and they soon formed a plan for 

 pursuing their observations in common. The two friends 

 wandered about for a considerable time amongst the Salzburg 

 Alps and in Styria, and then passed the winter together in 

 Salzburg, where their stay was marked by the meteorological 

 and endiometrical inquiries instituted by Humboldt. In 

 spring Buch proceeded alone over the Alps into Italy, and 

 respecting all his inquiries he gave to the public the most 

 valuable reports, which enriched science with new facts, filled 

 up blanks, and eliminated much that was untenable. Basaltic 

 rocks, with leucite and augite (pyroxene) in the mountains of 

 Albano, hitherto regarded by the school of Werner as 

 neptunistic formations, were recognised by him as lava, 

 though he still did not venture to remove the genesis of the 

 German basalts from the position which the then recognised 

 dogma had assigned to them. But the general turning-point 

 in his views with regard to the formation of basalt was 

 already astir within him, as appears from more than one 

 passage of a letter which, about this time, he wrote to von 

 Moll, and which has already been printed. Complaining that 

 he had not yet been able to get to Naples, he proceeds, " I 

 endeavour to make the best of matters where I am (in Rome), 

 and wander about over the country. But every day I feel 



