376 Biography of Baron Leopold von Buck. 



Buch, during his stay in the British Islands, made minute 

 observations upon the Hebrides, and the Giant's Causeway 

 in the county of Antrim ; and afterwards, in the Alps, he 

 directed his attention to the study of porphyries. His ex- 

 planation of dolomite has lately met with much and partly 

 well-grounded opposition. How conscientiously he pursued 

 his labours may be perceived from the circumstance that in 

 his old age he made a second journey to Norway, in order to 

 observe some facts bearing upon the transition of primary 

 rocks. 



The essential aim of Buclfs labours had always been to 

 invest the science of geology with a universal and organic 

 character, by comprehending all its elements in one vast 

 whole — the geognostic and physical relations of the earth's 

 surface, temperature, soil, plants : at a later period of his 

 life he enriched it by a profound study of petrifactions. He 

 gave a direction to palaeontology, by means of which it became 

 possible to draw from the remains of an extinct animal crea- 

 tion the most important conclusions with regard to the process 

 of formation of the earth's crust. This merit will remain, 

 even though geology may resume the path of chemical analysis. 

 But Germany may be especially proud of the very excellent 

 geological map which she owes to the illustrious deceased ; 

 and when his miscellaneous writings, and particularly those 

 minor compositions which are now lying scattered through 

 the Transactions of academies, become, by being collected — 

 as no doubt they will be — accessible to the general reader, 

 the noble language and scientific method by which every line 

 that Buch wrote was distinguished, will become duly appre- 

 ciated. In a work on Volcanoes which is now passing through 

 the press, Alexander von Humboldt has unconsciously erected 

 a worthy monument to his illustrious friend. 



