373 



Biography of the celebrated Naturalist, Baron Leopold von 

 Buch. Communicated for the Philosophical Journal. 



Berlin, March 6. — Leopold von Buch is dead. He expired 

 on the 4th instant, at two o'clock afternoon, after a short 

 illness. The once so active pedestrian, who even in his old 

 age used, when on geological excursions, by the extraordinary 

 amount of fatigue which he underwent, to put many a junior 

 to the blush, had of late been exhibiting, physically although 

 not intellectually, distinct signs of advancing age. In him 

 Germany loses not merely one of the most famous of her 

 literati, but one of those rare and extraordinary men on whom 

 the world, with its gifts and external distinctions, has nothing 

 in its power to bestow. Leopold von Buch was totally ab- 

 sorbed in his science — in the most unselfish efforts after the 

 attainment of truth. One must have seen and known him in 

 order to be able to comprehend the strength of his character 

 — a character which, from that very quality — especially in 

 such an atmosphere as Berlin — could not fail to be distin- 

 guished by some oddities. 



Buch was born, not, as has been commonly stated, in 1777, 

 but on the 26th of April 1774, and was a contemporary stu- 

 dent with Alexander von Humboldt in the Mining Academy 

 of Freiberg. Of all Werner's pupils it is he who has contri- 

 buted the most to the progress of geology, and who can be 

 most aptly compared with the Comte de Saussure, whom he 

 not merely equalled in the comprehensiveness of his minera- 

 logical and physical knowledge, in acuteness, in talent for 

 observation, and in unwearied zeal, but also resembled in 

 another respect : already in the possession of a fortune equal 

 to his wants, he gave himself wholly to science, without the 

 least reference to personal advantage, or its application to the 

 practical purposes of life. 



In the year 1797 he published a little work under the title 

 of " An Attempt at a Mineralogical Description of Landeck in 

 Silesia" (Versuch einer mineralogischen Beschreibung von 

 Landeck), which was a perfect model of clear and simple ex- 

 position, and of concise and perspicuous description. In the 



