May 24 , 1858 .] 
GERMANY. — COSMOS. 
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recent researches and discoveries. The principle of Mr. Roscher’s 
interpretation is said to be novel and convincing. 
Mr. A. Zurbold, of Leipzig, has brought out a Biography of the 
lamented Australian traveller, Dr. Leichhardt, and also collected 
and edited many detached papers and letters of that explorer. 
Professor Heller, who has been travelling for several years in 
Central America and Mexico, has published accounts of the province 
of Tabasco, and of the region of Orizaba, with map. He makes the 
heights of the Pic of Orizaba 16,602 Fr. feet, and of the mountain 
Popocatepetl 16,650 Fr. feet above the sea. Professor Burmeister 
of Halle, so well known to geologists by his work on fossil crus- 
taceans, &c., who previously travelled in the Brazils, has during the 
last year been exploring Uruguay, the Pampas, and other portions 
of South America. A work in two volumes by Julius Frobel con- 
tains a description of his travels and experiences in North and 
Central America during the years 1849 — 1856. Though not pro- 
fessing to be a scientific work, it contains, I am assured, much new 
and interesting matter. Two well illustrated quarto volumes re- 
lating to the United States of North America, by Balduin von Moll- 
hausen, have been published. This author, with Lieut. Whipple 
and Jules Marcou the well-known Swiss geologist, was employed 
in surveys and explorations connected with the projected railroads 
to the Pacific. The chief interest of this work, however, consists 
in its ethnography. An useful work on Chile has been published 
in French by Y. Perez-Rosales, the Chilean Consul at Hamburg. 
Cosmos. — Lastly, in mentioning the recently published works of 
German authors, let me dwell somewhat more on the 1st part of 
the 4th volume of the ‘ Cosmos ’ of the truly illustrious Humboldt. 
On this occasion the author quits the consideration of the heavens, 
so luminously expounded in his former volumes, and treats exclu- 
sively of telluric phenomena. The part recently issued consists of 
two main divisions, in the first of which he treats of the magni- 
tude, figure, density, and internal heat of the earth, as well as of 
its magnetism. He then pursues his grand fundamental plan ; and 
maintaining the connecting links which unite all telluric phe- 
nomena and the representation of the concurrent action of forces in a 
single system, he devotes the second division to those terrestrial 
phenomena which are attributable to the reaction going forward from 
the interior upon the exterior of the planet, or, in other parlance, 
“ volcanicity.” This great class of physical agencies is most skil- 
fully elaborated under the respective heads of earthquakes, thermal 
