curious approximations on this object, so important for the philosophical study of the history of man. I flatter myself, that a part of his labors will find a place in this narrative.

Of those different works which I have here enumerated, the second and third were composed by Mr. Bonpland, from the observations which he made on the spot, 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 by me, and will appear in a separate publication, under the title of Nova Genera et Species Plantarum. In this work will be found not only the new species which we collected, and the number of which, after a long examination by one of the first botanists of the age, Prof. Willdenow, amounts to fourteen or fifteen hundred*, but also the interesting observations made

* A considerable part of these species is already inserted in the second division of the fourth part of the Species Plantarum of Linnæus, fourth edition. Of the eringiums, which we brought over from America, eleven new species have been engraved in the

by Mr. Bonpland, on the plants which have hitherto been imperfectly described. The plates of this work will be engraved and executed according to the method followed by Mr. Labillardiere, in the Specimen Plantarum Nova Hollandia, which is a model of sagacity in research, and order in compilation.

The astronomical, geodesical, and barometric observations, have been calculated in a uniform manner, by employing correspondent observations, and according to tables of the utmost precision, by Mr. Oltmanns, professor of astronomy, and member of the academy of Berlin; who undertook the publication of my astronomical journal, which he has enriched with the results of his inquiries concerning the geography of America, the observations of Spanish, French, and English travellers, and the choice of the methods used by astronomers. I had calculated, during the course of my journey, two-thirds of my own observations, a part of the results of which

beautiful monography of this genus, published by Mr. de la Roche.

had been published previous to my return, in the Connaissance des Temps, and in the Ephemerides of Baron Zach. The trifling differences, which exist between the results obtained by Prof. Oltmanns and myself arise from his having made a more rigorous calculation from the whole of my observations, and his having employed the lunar tables of Burg, and of correspondent observations at Greenwich; while I used only the Connaissance des Temps, calculated from the tables of Masson.

The observations I had made on the dip of the needle, the intensity of the magnetic forces, and the small horary variations of the variation, will appear in a separate treatise, which will be added to my Essay on Geological Pasigraphy. This last work, which I began to compose in Mexico, in 1803, will be accompanied by profiles, indicating the stratification and relative age of the rocks, the types of which were observed by Mr. Leopold Von Buch and myself in the two continents, between the twelfth of southern and the seventy-first of northern latitude. Aided by the labors of this great geologist, who has examined

Europe from the North Cape in Lapland, and with whom I had the happiness of beginning my earliest studies at the school of Freiberg, I have been enabled to extend the plan of a work intended to throw some light on the construction of the Globe, and on the relative antiquity of it's formation.

After having distributed into separate works all that belongs to astronomy, botany, zoology, the political description of New Spain, and the history of the ancient civilization of certain nations of the New Continent, there still remained a great number of general results and local descriptions, which I might have collected into separate treatises. I had prepared several during my journey; on the races of men in South America; on the missions of the Oroonoko; on the obstacles to the progress of society in the torrid zone, from the climate, and the strength of vegetation: the character of the landscape in the Cordilleras of the Andes, compared with that of the Alps in Switzerland; the analogies between the rocks of the two hemispheres ; on the physical constitution of the air in the equinoctial

regions; &c. I had left Europe with the firm intention of not writing what is usually called the historical narrative of a journey, but to publish the fruit of my inquiries in works merely descriptive; and I had arranged the facts, not in the order in which they successively presented themselves, but according to the relation they bore to each other. Amidst the overwhelming majesty of Nature, and the stupendous objects she present sat every step, the traveller is little disposed to record in his journal what relates only to himself, and the ordinary details of life.

I had composed a very brief itinerary during the course of my navigation on the rivers of South America, and in my long journies by land, in which I regularly described, and almost always on the spot, the excursions which I made toward the summit of a volcano, or any other mountain remarkable for it's height: but the composition of my journal was interrupted whenever I resided in a town, or when other occupations prevented me from continuing a work, which I considered as having only a secondary interest. When I employed