"While I was impressed, for the reasons so ably stated by Holland, for the greater probability of the organic theory, I prefer, for reasons stated by myself, the fungous to the animalcular hypothesis. "My preference is founded on the vast number, extraordinary variety, minuteness, diffusion, and climatic peculiarities of the Fungi. "The spores of these plants are not only numerous, minute, and indefinitely diffused, but they are so like to animal cells, as to have the power of penetrating into, and germinating upon, the most interior tissues of the human body.

Introduced into the body through the stomach, or by the skin or lungs, cryptogamous poisons were shewn to produce diseases of a febrile character, intermittent, remittent and continued; which were most successfully treated by wine and bark. The cryptogamous theory well explains the obstruction to the progress of malaria offered by a road, a wall, a screen of trees, a veil, or a gauze curtain.

"It also accounts for the nice localization of an ague, or yellow fever, or cholera, and the, want of power in steady winds to convey malarious diseases into the heart of a city from the adjacent country.

"It explains also well, the security afforded by artificially drying the air of malarious places, the exemption of cooks and smiths from the sweating sickness the cause of the danger from mouldy sheets, and of the sternutation from old books and papers.

"On no other theory can we so well account, if account at all, for the phenomena of mitzbrane and milk sickness, the introduction of yellow fever, into northern ports, and the wonderful irregularities of the progress of cholera.

The Cryptogamous theory will well explain the peculiar domestication of different diseases in different regions, which have a similar climate; the plague of Egypt, the yellow fever of Antilles, and the cholera of India. It accounts, too, for their occasional expansion into unaccustomed places, and their retreat back to their original haunts. "Finally, it explains the cause of the non-recurrence of very potent maladies, better than the chemical theory of Leibig; and shews why the earliest cases of an epidemic are commonly the most fatal.

R.

ART. VIII.-HUMBOLDT'S ASPECTS OF Nature. Aspects of Nature in different lands and different climates, with scientific elucidations. By ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. Translated by Mrs. SABINE. Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard.

THE Wonderful progress of physical science is one of the most striking features of the present age. At no former period of time does history or fable present to us such astonishing revelations in the world of science, or such daring investigations into the arcana of natural history. The physicists of the nineteenth century surpass, both in the comprehensiveness of their observation and in the grandeur of their discoveries, those of any former age. The tree of science has struck deep its roots into the earth, and spread wide its branches over every part of its surface. Its leaves are eloquent with wonder; its blossoms astonish us with their exceeding beauty and variety, and its fruits are more precious than "apples of gold.”

To write soberly, and without enthusiasm, of the present state of scientific developments, would require a degree of phlegmatism to which we would not willingly plead guilty. Stoics of the "nil admirari” school may possibly be unmoved at the brilliant succession of triumphs which science is achieving. They may look with indifference upon the electric telegraph, which renders thought instantaneously vocal a thousand miles away from the place of its conception, and enables the dwellers upon opposite sides of a continent to commune, as it were, face to face. They may see no cause for admiration in the almost infinite extension of the visible universe by the revelations of the telescope. To them, nebulous oceans, studded with archipelagos of worlds, may be mere matters of course. They may, perhaps, feel no emotion of surprise at discovering the sublime age of our planet, comprehending a series of years that puts even arithmetic to the blush, and affords us the most luminous commentary upon that text of Holy writ which declares that to the Deity "a thousand years are but as one day!" They may be unstartled even, by a glance into the very heart of our mother earth, to find it the seat of volcanic life, heaving and tossing with fierce lava floods, the heat of which extends so near the surface-crust of our planet, that it is

appreciable in the temperature of the water which gushes from our artesian wells.

All these, and a thousand other scientific marvels, may fail, we say, to excite enthusiasm in some minds, but we are not of that class. Such things cannot be "without our special wonder," and we are not ashamed to confess that a new world of delight and enjoyment is perpetually opening before us in the discoveries of physical science.

Akin to our eagerly acknowledged interest in the results of philosophic research, is that which we cherish toward the great oracles of its mysterious utterances. They dwell apart, in our estimation, from the common herd of men, whose highest ambition it is to grasp the sensual, and whose homage to science is thanklessly extorted by the obvious influence it exerts upon the agencies and appliances of their sordid occupations and pursuits.

Conspicuous in the annals of natural history, and identified with some of the proudest discoveries in terrestrial physics, is the name of the Baron, Alexander Von Humboldt, the author of the volume to which this notice is designed rather to call the reader's attention, than to offer him a critical estimate of its merits. A hasty glance at his illustrious career will be no unfit accompaniment to what we may have to say of his latest work.

Baron Humboldt was born at Berlin in 1769, so that he has very recently completed his eightieth year. From his advanced position he may look back upon more than half a century devoted to active labors in the great field of nature-labors more diversified than those of any other physicist whatever. He has explored nearly all the territory of our globe, from the ice-ribbed shores of the polar regions to the arid deserts of the tropical zone. Of him it may with truth be said, that he has

"the heavens and earth of every country seen;"

and seen them, too, with no meagre power of vision, or with no narrow scope. He has scaled almost inaccessible mountain heights to determine their altitude and their geographical relations to each other. He has broken their rocky cliffs with the hammer of the patient mineralogist, and dived into their caverns with the ardour of the geologist. He has plucked the Alpine flower, the solitary blossom of the desert, and the gorgeous corolla of tropical NEW SERIES, VOL. I.-NO. I. 11

gardens, with the eager delight of the botanist. He has explored the animal world in its multifarious forms, with the discrimination of the zoologist; investigated the phenomena of the elements with the rare skill of the chemist; and examined the political and social system of various countries with the deliberation of the political and social economist. In short, he has contemplated all things in the spirit of a most comprehensive philosophy, and by rare powers of induction, evolved from the myriad details of his observation-some of the loftiest and sublimest generalizations of modern science.

It is difficult to say in which department of science this great man has most distinguished himself. His researches have, however, imparted such a splendor to physical geography, that we shall not err greatly in claiming for him pre-eminence in that branch of knowledge. Connected with it are many of his most gigantic labors, the records of which constitute his ablest contributions to scientific literature.

When he was yet very young, in his twenty-first year, he published a volume of observations upon the basaltic formations of the banks of the Rhine; and shortly afterwards he issued a work upon the mines of Freyburg. To these succeeded, with a rapidity that exhibits the almost incredible fertility of his mind, treatises upon various branches of science, among which his work on Animal Electricity" is the most prominent.

66

In his thirtieth year, Humboldt commenced that celebrated exploring expedition, in company with Bonplandt, the record of which is undoubtedly the chef d'ouvre of his vast labors. It occupied a series of years, and the scene of it was the equinoctial territory of the New World. It may readily be conceived that to such an investigator as Humboldt, the vast regions of Central America offered the most brilliant field for scientific discovery; and no words of ours could adequately estimate the extent and value of its results to science.

This expedition occupied a period of six years, and they constituted an epoch in the annals of physical science unsurpassed by any that preceded, or by any that has yet followed it. It was the labor of many subsequent years to reduce the results of that gigantic exploration to book form, extending to nearly thirty magnificent volumes. With a part of this work in its English translation, so

skilfully and faithfully rendered by Mrs. Williams, many of our readers are doubtless acquainted.

To these labors succeeded others of a deeply interesting character, and his lectures upon the Physical Condition of the Globe, delivered at Berlin in his fifty-third year, display the extent and profundity of his observations. In 1829 he undertook an expedition into Central Asia, and explored those regions in the old world, which correspond nearly in geographical position, to the field of his researches in the new world. The records of these adventures were published in 1843, and embrace a copious topography of the Uralian chain of mountains, the Chinese frontier, and the Caspian Sea. It is worthy of mention, to the honor of sovereignty, that our illustrious traveller was enabled to perform this noble expedition out of a liberal pension of 12,000 dollars, granted to him by his sovereign, King Frederick William, of Prussia.

Passing over other productions of his busy pen, we mention briefly his great work, the "Kosmos," a name which he himself designates as "imprudent," from its grand and startling comprehensiveness, but which was not inaptly chosen, to convey an idea of the aggregated results of half a century's patient, toilsome and philosophic observation, in nearly all quarters of the globe. It is truly a cosmography of no common order, in which Nature is viewed both objectively and reflectively, both in her own aspects, and in the sensations which they produce upon the human mind.

66

Kindred with this great work is the volume which we have made the text of this article, and to an examination of which we must hastily proceed. It is not a new work which claims our notice, for nearly half a century ago its first edition appeared in Berlin, under its present title, Ansechten der Natur." In 1826 a second edition was published in Paris, containing additional essays, and the author has now had the proud satisfaction, when burdened with the weight of four score years, of preparing a third edition, in which what is new greatly exceeds what is old. He has entirely remodelled the work, to meet the requisitions of the age; and his annotations and elucidations attest the unimpaired condition of his intellectual energies.

The papers composing the volume took their origin, ast the author tells us," in the presence of natural scenes of