Views of nature: or Contemplations on the sublime phenomena of creation with scientific illustrations

Great pains have been taken with the present translation, as well in regard to fidelity and style, as in what may be termed the accessories. In addition to all that is contained...

General review of the mountain systems of Asia. Meridian chains: the Ural, which separates lower Europe from lower Asia or the Scythian Europe of Pherecydes of Syros and Herodot...

Investigations into the supposed number of the phanerogamic species of plants, which have hitherto been described or are preserved in herbariums. Numerical ratios of plant-forms...

This Steppe incloses an area of 256,000 square miles. Owing to inaccurate geographical data, it has often been described as extending in equal breadth to the Straits of Magellan...

The mode of capturing the gymnotus affords a picturesque spectacle. A number of mules and horses are driven into a swamp, which is closely surrounded by Indians, until the unusu...

The deserts of Africa and Asia acquire a peculiar character from the frequent occurrence of immense tracts of land, covered by one flat uniform surface of naked rock. In the Sch...

If before we close these general remarks regarding the configuration of North America we once more cast a glance at those regions which separate the two diverging coast chains f...

We learn, however, from the astonishment of the companions of the admiral, when they were continuously surrounded by sea-grass from the 16th of September to the 8th of October,...

No portion of the so-called Desert of Gobi, which consists in part of fine pasture lands, has been so thoroughly investigated in relation to its differences of elevations as the...

After considering the four great mountain systems of Asia, which, in their normal geognostic character, are true parallel chains, we must turn to the long series of _alternating...

“Of the three passes that we crossed on our way from Milam, all of them being about 17,000 feet in elevation, the first is Wata-dhára, and we saw no snow on any part of the way...

Significant denominations, particularly such as refer to the form of the earth’s surface, and which arose at a period when there was only very uncertain information respecting d...

This production of cold (or the exhaustion of heat by emission) will be the more considerable in proportion to the thinness of the leaves. A second stratum of leaves has its upp...

───────────────────────────────────┬───────────┬─────────────────────── │ South │ Mean Annual, Winter, Places. │ Latitude. │ and Summer │ │ Temperatures. ───────────────────────...

Zimmermann’s map of the district of the Upper Nile shows the dividing line where the basin of the great river terminates in the south-east, and which separates it from the domai...

My intelligent friend and teacher, Link, has however shown in a comprehensive and critical treatise,[GD] that these passages are open to much doubt. In a former essay of my own,...

In the Capitania General de Caracas, as well as in all the eastern part of America, the civilization formerly introduced by Europeans is limited to the narrow strip of land whic...

Remarkable relics of a former culture, consisting of granitic vessels ornamented with beautiful representations of labyrinths, and the earthenware forms resembling the Roman mas...

This conjecture is confirmed by various circumstances. Thus, for instance, the Orinoco, like the Nile at Philæ and Syene, has the singular property of colouring black the reddis...

Thus I wrote respecting these sources in the year 1807, in the first edition of the _Ansichten der Natur_, and I repeat with equal truth the same statement after an interval of...

I have had much pleasure in finding that the travels of Sir Robert Schomburgk have fully corroborated these early views. The section of his map which gives the course of the Ess...

On leaving the Island del Diamante, where the Zambos, who speak Spanish, cultivate the sugar-cane, we entered into a grand and wild domain of nature. The air was filled with cou...

When the active spirit of man is directed to the investigation of nature, or when in imagination he scans the vast fields of organic creation, among the varied emotions excited...

The physiognomy of nature is principally determined by sixteen forms of plants. I merely enumerate such as I have observed in my travels through the old and new world during man...

Small singing birds, and even butterflies, (as I have myself witnessed in the Pacific,) are often met with at great distances from the shore, during storms blowing off land. In...

As in the frigid zone deprivation of warmth produces winter-sleep in some animals, so in the torrid regions, within the tropics, an analogous phenomenon is manifested that has n...

Every coral-trunk arises by a process of gemmation in accordance with certain laws, and forms one complete structure, each portion being formed by a great number of organically...

“Strato of Lampsacus,” says Strabo,[LQ] “enters more fully than the Lydian Xanthus (who has described the impressions of shells far from the sea) into a consideration of the cau...

It was not Malpighi, as has been generally asserted, but the intellectual Michel Montaigne, who had the merit of first showing, in 1581, in his _Voyage en Italie_, the relation...

The forms of organic beings are reciprocally dependent on one another. Such is the unity of nature, that these forms limit each other in obedience to laws which are probably con...

The following considerations oppose the hypothesis that we are already acquainted with half the Phanerogamia on the earth’s surface. Several thousand species of Monocotyledons a...

“Nature seems to have accumulated all the beauties of form in the Jagua palm, which, intermingled with the Cucurito or Vadgihai, whose stem rises to a height of 80 or even more...

The almost animal-like form occasionally observed in blossoms of the Orchideæ is most strongly marked in Anguloa grandiflora, celebrated in South America as the Torito; in the M...

In the form of acicular-leaved trees, Nature presents us with the greatest length of stem existing in arborescent productions. I use the term arborescent, for, as we have alread...

In the candelabra-like form of Aloes, the branches of the main-trunk must not be confounded with the flower-stalks. In the American aloe, Agave Americana (Maguey de Cocuyza), wh...

The Myrtle is a graceful plant, with stiff, shining, crowded, and generally entire and small leaves marked with dots. Myrtles impart a peculiar character to three regions of the...

When we consider the influence exerted on the study of nature during the last few centuries, by the extension of geographical knowledge and by means of scientific expeditions to...

If, in the newspaper reports of great eruptions, we often find assertions made of an entire change of form in Mount Vesuvius, and if these assertions appear to be confirmed by t...

A. _Rocca del Palo, the highest northern margin of the Crater of Vesuvius, was estimated by_— Feet. Saussure, in 1773, barometrically, probably according to Deluc’s formula 3894...

Further in the same work,[RP] I have said, “It must, however, be remembered, that the inorganic crust of the earth contains within it the same elements that enter into the struc...

At Chamaya we found rafts (_balsas_) in readiness to convey us to Tomependa, where we wished to determine the difference of longitude between Quito and the mouth of the Chinchip...

The son of the Cacique Astorpilca, an interesting and amiable youth of seventeen, conducted us over the ruins of the ancient palace. Though living in the utmost poverty, his ima...

“The Greeks,” says Strabo, (lib. v. p. 235, Casaub,) “in building their cities sought to produce a happy result by aiming at the union of beauty and solidity; but, on the other...

At the time of my expedition the longitude of Lima, as determined by Malaspina and marked in the maps published by the Deposito Hidrografico de Madrid, was 5^h 16′ 53″. The tran...

Himalaya, estimated height of the, 32; mountain plateau of the, 54; the mountain chain of, 63, 68; observations of various travellers, 70; general elevation of, 71; on the perpe...

Schomburgk, Sir R., his antiquarian researches in South America, 147–151; his observations on the sources of the Orinoco, 176; his journey across the continent of South America,...

On the vegetable remains found in the lignite formations of the north of America and of Europe, compare Adolph Brongniart, _Prodrome d’une Hist. des Végétaux Fossiles_, p. 179,...

Playfair, in the _Transactions of the Royal Soc. of Edinb._, vol. v. 1805, p. 202; Humboldt, on the sum total of the thermometric degrees required for the cycle of vegetation of...