mu 
IKIBODUCTION. 
of the plants, and the aspect of lovely or vtild scenery, have great 
influence on the progress of the arts, and on the style which 
distinguishes their productions. This influence is so much the 
more perceptible in proportion as man is farther removed from 
civilization. 
I could have added to this work researches on the character of 
languages, which are the most durable monuments of nations. 
^ have collected a number of materials on the languages of Ame- 
rica, of which MM. Frederic Schlegel and Vater have made use ; 
the former m his Considerations on the Hindoos, the latter in his 
Continuation of the Mithridates of Adelung, in the Ethnographical 
Magazine, and in his Inquiries into the Population of the New 
Continent. These materials are now in the hands of my brother 
William von Humboldt, who, during his travels in Spain, and a 
long abode at Rome, formed the richest collection of American 
vocabularies in existence. His extensive knowledge of the ancient 
and modern languages has enabled him to trace some curious 
analogies in relation to this subject, so important to the philo- 
sophical study of the history of man. A part of his labours will 
find a place in this narrative. 
Of the different works which 1 have here enumerated the 
second and third were composed by M. Bonpland, from the 
observations which he made in a botanical journal. This journal 
contains more than four thousand methodical descriptions of 
equinoctial plants, a ninth part only of which have been made 
r ?r e ’ '2 loy a PP ear bi a separate publication, under the title 
ot A ova Genera et Species Plantarum. In this work will be 
found, not only the new species we collected, which, after a care- 
er ljy one of tlle first botanists of the age, Prof. 
WiDdenow, are computed to amount to fourteen or fifteen hun- 
dred, but also the interesting observations made by M. Bonpland 
on plants hitherto imperfectly described. The plates of this 
w° rk are all engraved according to the method followed by 
M. Labillardiere, in the Specimen Plantarum Novae Hollandiae, a 
work remarkable for profound research and clearness of arrann-e- 
ment. B 
After having distributed into separate works all that belongs 
to astronomy, botany, zoology, the political description of New 
bpam, and the ^ history of the ancient civilization of certain 
nations of the New Continent, there still remained many general 
results and local descriptions, which I might have collected into 
separate treatises. I had, daring my journey, prepared papers 
on the races of men in South America ; on the Missions of the 
Orinoco ; on the obstacles to the progress of society in the torrid 
zone arising from the climate and the strength of vegetation • 
on the character of the laudscape in the Cordilleras of the Andes’ 
compared with that of the Alps in Switzerland ; on the analogies 
