alities where platina and diamonds had
been found, to determine their geological relation. He accomplished the
journey with Ehrenberg and Gustavus Rose, who published the result of
their mineralogical and geological survey, in a work of which he is the
sole author; while Humboldt published under the title of "Asiatic
Fragments of Geology and Climatology," his observations of the physical
and geographical features made during that journey. But he had hardly
returned to Berlin when in consequence of the revolution of 1830, he was
sent by the King of Prussia as extraordinary ambassador to France, to
honor the elevation of Louis Philippe to the throne. Humboldt had long
been a personal friend of the Orleans family, and he was selected
ambassador on that occasion on account of these personal relations. From
1830 to 1848 he lived alternately in Berlin and in Paris, spending
nearly half the time in Paris and half the time in Berlin, with
occasional visits to England and Denmark; publishing the results of his
investigations in Asia, making original investigations upon various
things and especially pressing the establishment of observatories, and
connected magnetic observations all over the globe, for which he
obtained the co-operation of the Russian government and that of the
government of England; and at that time those observations in Australia
and in the Russian empire to the borders of China, were established
which have led to such important results in our knowledge of terrestrial
magnetism. Since 1848 he has lived uninterruptedly in Berlin, where he
published on the anniversary of his eightieth year a new edition of
those charming first flowers of his pen; his "Views of Nature," the
first edition of which was published in Germany in 1808. This third
edition appeared with a series of new and remodelled annotations and
explanations; and that book in which he first presented his views of
nature, in which he drew those vivid pictures of the physiognomy of
plants and of their geographical distribution is now revived and brought
to the present state of science.

The "Views of Nature" is a work which Humboldt has always cherished, and
to which in his "Cosmos" he refers more frequently than to any other
work. It is no doubt because there he has expressed his deepest
thoughts, his most impressive views, and even foreshadowed those
intimate convictions which he never expressed, but which he desired to
record in such a manner that th