"Humboldt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Humboldt was born in Berlin on September 14, 1769. In 1788 he made the acquaintance of George Forster, one of Captain Cook's companions, and geological excursions made with him were the occasion of his first ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... a period of leisure travelling and living. Frederic saw Spontini, Mendelssohn and Zelter at a distance and heard "Freischutz." He attended the congress and made sport of the scientists, Alexander von Humboldt included. On the way home they stopped at a place called Zullichau, and Chopin improvised on Polish airs so charmingly that the stage was delayed, "all hands turning in" to listen. This is another of the anecdotes of honorable ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... rules of hygiene here laid down, became an athlete and capable of running twenty-five miles for sheer love of sport and apparently without the overstrain experienced by "Marathon" runners. Kant and Humboldt are cases typical in different fields of achievement of many of the world's most vital men who have actually made over their constitutions from weakness to strength. Cornaro says that it was the neglect of hygienic laws which made him all but a dead man at thirty-seven, and that the thoroughgoing ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... violently attacks other large carnivores, not to feed on them, but merely to satisfy its animosity; and, while respecting man, it is, within the tropics, a great hunter and eater of monkeys, which of all animals most resemble men. We can only conclude with Humboldt that there is something mysterious in the hatreds ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... effort to represent a wilderness that is there only for the sake of the hermits leads to the curious contradiction of a populous hermitage, every part of it occupied by figures resolutely bent on being alone, and sedulously ignoring the others. Humboldt quotes from the early Fathers some glowing descriptions of natural scenery, but they turn always upon the seclusion from mankind, and upon the contrast between the grandeur of God's works and the littleness of ours. But in Claude we have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... farther! Step softly into the chamber of my heart-here we are in the vestibule—utter stillness—no Humboldt—no architect—no barking dog. Thou art not a stranger; go up and knock; it will be alone and call to thee "Come in!" Thou wilt find it on a cool, quiet couch, and a friendly light will greet thee. All will be peace and order, and thou wilt be welcome! What is that? Heavens! See the flames shooting ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... feeling, is as much of a necessity to man as eating and sleeping. Even those who do nothing which to a sensible man can be called work, still imagine that they are doing something. The world possesses not a man who is an idler in his own eyes.—WILHELM VON HUMBOLDT. ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... Nezahualcoyotl at eighty, of which he could find only one extant, and this, as I understand his words, in Spanish only. See his Tezcuco en los Tiempos de sus Antiguous Reyes, p. 253 (Mexico, 1826). When Alexander von Humboldt visited Mexico he sought in vain for any fragment of the songs of the royal bard. Vues lies Cordilleres, etc., Tom. ...
— Ancient Nahuatl Poetry - Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature Number VII. • Daniel G. Brinton
... had made him reconsider, like a great sickness or a bereavement. It had shown him that life was slipping, that afternoon was coming, that in a few more years he would be forty, that the "Wonder-Child," as Humboldt had styled him, was grown to mature man, and that all the vent he had as yet found for his great gifts was a series of scandalous law-suits and an esoteric volume of the philosophy of Heraclitus the Dark. And now, coming to him in the midst of his great ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... order was sent from Paris to compass the arrest of Coleridge. It was in the year 1806, when the poet was making a tour in Italy. The news reached him at Naples, through a brother of the illustrious Humboldt, as Mr. Gillman says—or in a friendly warning from Prince Jerome Bonaparte, as we have it on the authority of Mr. Cottle—and the Pope appears to have been reluctant to have a hand in the business, and, in fact, to have furnished him with ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... discovery to make a man immortal! What fools the old geographers were that used to say,—"the axis is an imaginary line, running through," etc., etc. The name of Whopper will now be heralded to all coming generations with the names of Bacon and Newton and La Place and Humboldt, and all the rest of them! Fame, ...
— John Whopper - The Newsboy • Thomas March Clark
... discomforts. Among the many points of interest to be seen are the picturesque Columbia River Bar, the beautiful Ocean Beach at Clatsop, the towering heights of Cape Hancock, the lonely Mid-Ocean Lighthouse at Tillamook Rock, the historical Rogue River Reef, Cape Mendocino, Humboldt Bay, Point Arena, and last, but not least, the world-renowned Golden ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax
... shovels away a little more of the dirt-heap; Mr. Napier clears him (for which we owe him many thanks), by simple statement of facts, from the charge of having deserted and neglected his Virginia colonists; Humboldt and Schomburgk clear him from the charge of having lied about Guiana; and so on; each successive writer giving in generally on merest hearsay to the general complaint against him, either from fear ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... for an amateur theatrical thing, and a manager there wanted me to work it up—said he'd produce it. I tinkered away at that for a while, but there was no money in it, and Steele sent me out to see how I'd like working in one of the Humboldt lumber camps. I thought that sounded good. But I got my leg broken the first week, and had to wire him from the hospital for money. So, when I got well again, he sent me a night wire about this job, and I went to see Kahn the next day, ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... different languages."[3] Mr. Stephen Powers tells us that, in California, he found many Indians speaking three, four, five or more languages, generally including English;[4] and in South America, both Humboldt and D'Orbigny express their surprise at the same fact, which they ...
— Aboriginal American Authors • Daniel G. Brinton
... travelling to one who cannot see? I answer, Does every traveller see all that he describes?—and is not every traveller obliged to depend upon others for a great proportion of the information he collects? Even Humboldt himself was not exempt ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... same persistent hatred which, in our own day, grudged and delayed due honors at the tombs of Copernicus and Galileo among Catholics, and of Humboldt among Protestants, was still bitter against the great Venetian scholar and statesman. It could not be forgotten that he had wrested from the Vatican the most terrible of its weapons. But patriotic pride was strong, and finally a compromise was made: it was arranged ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... of the third and last volume of HUMBOLDT'S Cosmos has been published at Stuttgart. It is on the Fixed Stars, and makes a pretty ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... this memoir on Medusae, sharing this supreme distinction of scientific England with men so illustrious as Joule, the discoverer of the relation between force and heat, Stokes, the great investigator of optical physics, and Humboldt, the traveller, all of whom received medals in the same year. In making the presentation to Huxley, the Earl of Rosse, then President ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... dreary red light on the northern and eastern mountains, adding sullenness to the gloom, instead of dispelling it. But why describe this gloomy sunset, there are so many beautiful ones?—when, as the grand, old, dying Humboldt said, the 'glorious rays seem to beckon earth ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Humboldt, in his "Researches" on the origin of the first inhabitants of Spain, falls into errors which are to be lamented; as his great name may afford sanction to the dreams of others. He acknowledges that he is puzzled to find that ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... Sink of the Humboldt Indians Stealing Cattle An Entire Company Compelled to Walk Abandoned to Die Wolfinger Murdered Rhinehart's Confession Arrival of C. T. Stanton A Temporary Relief A Fatal Accident The Sierra Nevada Mountains Imprisoned ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... send goods, or gold, or securities. German industries, except those making war supplies, were not producing over 25 per cent. of capacity, and many were closed. The Siemens-Schuckert Works, even before the Landsturm was called out, lost 40 per cent. of their men on mobilization. The Humboldt Steel Works, near Cologne, employing 4,000 men, were closed early in August, as were nearly all the great iron works in the district between Duesseldorf and Duisburg. Probably 50 to 75 per cent. of the workers were called to the colors. The skilled artisans were in the army or in munition factories; ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Columbus was doing the same thing in his quest, and thought no hardship too great if he could only come upon the answer. Galileo, Huxley, Newton, Tyndall, Humboldt, Darwin, Edison, and Burbank are only the schoolboys grown large in their search for the meaning of truth. They have enlarged the content of the word for us all, and by following their lead we may attain ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... rear admiral, wanted to present his homage to the "leader of all South America"; Lord Byron, whose yacht was called Bolivar, also expressed his desire to visit him. Lafayette, Monsignor de Pradt, Martin de Nancy, Martin-Maillefer, and the noted Humboldt, among others, expressed their admiration for Bolivar. Victor Hugo praised him. His name was on the lips of the Republicans of Europe ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... said a terrible thing: "Woman is the nervous part of humanity, man the muscular." Humboldt himself, that serious thinker, has said that an invisible atmosphere surrounds the human nerves. I do not quote the dreamers who watch the flight of Spallanzani's bat, and who think they have found a sixth sense ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... there does not exist on the surface of the earth a formation known to geologists resembling that of the Amazons. Its extent is stupendous; it stretches from the Atlantic shore, through the whole width of Brazil, into Peru, to the very foot of the Andes. Humboldt speaks of it "in the vast plains of the Amazons, in the eastern boundary of Jaen de Bracamoros," and says, "This prodigious extension of red sandstone in the low grounds stretching along the east of the Andes is one of the most striking ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... date we first hear that negroes had been introduced into the colony. But their introduction into Spain and Europe took place early in the fifteenth century. "Ortiz de Zuigo, as Humboldt reports, with his usual exactness, says distinctly that 'blacks had been already brought to Seville in the reign of Henry III of Castile,' consequently before 1406. 'The Catalans and the Normans frequented the western coast of Africa as far as the Tropic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... success in improving wheat by the selection of the finest grains. It is possible, however, that man, by long-continued selection, may have given to the grains of the cereals a greater amount of starch or other matter, than the seedlings can utilise for their growth. There can be little doubt, as Humboldt long ago remarked, that the grains of cereals have been rendered attractive to birds in a degree which is highly injurious to the species.) Nor can this difference in the growth of the seedling ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... rocks in many parts of the world, except on the belief that they have subsequently been completely denuded of all overlying strata? That such extensive areas do exist cannot be doubted: the granitic region of Parime is described by Humboldt as being at least nineteen times as large as Switzerland. South of the Amazon, Boue colours an area composed of rocks of this nature as equal to that of Spain, France, Italy, part of Germany, and the ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... himself." The extravagance of the naked Indians of South America in decorating themselves is shewn "by a man of large stature gaining with difficulty enough by the labour of a fortnight to procure in exchange the chica necessary to paint himself red." (43. Humboldt, 'Personal Narrative,' Eng. translat. vol. iv. p. 515; on the imagination shewn in painting the body, p. 522; on modifying the form of the calf of the leg, p. 466.) The ancient barbarians of Europe during the Reindeer period brought to their caves any brilliant or singular ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... the transplantation. Get the boy out of his home environment; sever the cord that holds him to his "folks"; let him meet new faces, see new sights, hear new sermons, meet new teachers, and his efforts at adjustment will work for growth. Alexander Humboldt was right—one year at college is safer than four. One year inspires you—four may get you pot-bound ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... somewhere," Felix said, turning it over in his mind, "that when Humboldt was travelling in the wilds of South America he found one very old parrot in an Indian village, which, the Indians assured him, spoke the language of an extinct tribe, incomprehensible then by any living person. If I recollect aright, Humboldt believed that particular ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... to 1471) there is an inlet on the western coast of Ireland called "Lacus Fortunatus," which is filled with Fortunate Islands to the number of 358 (Humboldt, "Examen," II. p. 159), and in one map of 1471 both these and the supposed St. Brandan's group appear in different parts of the ocean under the same name. When the Canary Islands were discovered, they were ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... to Humboldt County where his sister was living. He was an interesting figure, gentlemanly, fastidious, reserved, sensitive, with a good fund of humor, a pleasant voice and a modest manner. He seemed poorly fitted for anything that needed doing. He was willing, for I saw him digging post holes ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... interview on the 8th, and at the second on the following morning;* (* "No person was present at our conversations except Mr. Brown" (Flinders, Voyage 1 190). Robert Brown was a very celebrated botanist. Humboldt styled him "botanicorum facile princeps." His Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae is a classic of price.) both taking place in the French captain's cabin. Peron, in the first volume of the Voyage de Decouvertes, wrote as though he were present and heard what occurred between the two ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... very misleading to imagine a monad as a separate entity trailing its slow way in a distinct path through the lower kingdoms, and after an incalculable series of transmigrations flowering into a human being; in short, that the monad of a Humboldt dates back to the monad of an atom of hornblende. Instead of saying a mineral monad, the correcter phraseology in physical science which differentiates every atom, would of course have been to call it the Monad manifesting ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... spectacles, almost an octogenarian—a mummy with a green eye-shade, whom I supposed to be a domestic divinity.... I am at home again; it is half-past six in the evening, and I have eaten nothing since this morning. Berlin is the city of ennui; I should die here in a week. Poor Humboldt is dying of it; he drags with him ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... was a term applied to all the wild tribes of Mexico; it was also used specially to designate the hunting and pastoral tribes in the northern provinces of the present country of Mexico—who, according to Humboldt (New Spain, Black's trans., London, 1811, i, p. 133), came to that country about 1170. See also G.P. Winship's Coronado ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson
... ever seen, and the account of which I suspect has originated in some mistake. The captain told me he had made a detailed survey of part of the south coast, and if the coal arrived should go away at once to Humboldt Pay, in longitude 141 deg. east, which is the line up to which the Dutch claim New Guinea. On board the tender I found a brother naturalist, a German named Rosenberg, who was draughtsman to the surveying ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... that my next field of labor was to be in a city in the extreme northern part of California, I, after a week of loving intercourse with my precious girls, sailed for Eureka, Humboldt County, arriving there on June 8, 1904. As usual, the local papers immediately announced my coming, one saying, through the interviewing reporter, that I had ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... of what goes on, and not less of what has been seen and what has gone on, in this wonderful historic earth of ours, with all its fulness. He was keen, exact, capacious,—tranquil and steady in his gaze as Nature herself. He was, thus far, kindred to Aristotle, to Pliny, Linnaeus, Cuvier, and Humboldt, though the great German, and the greater Stagirite, had higher and deeper spiritual insights than Edward Forbes ever gave signs of. It is worth remembering that Dr. George Wilson was up to his death engaged in preparing his Memoir ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... of too limited circulation for works of general scientific interest. Lectures were all delivered in Latin, until Thomasius broke open a new path, and now lessons otherwise than in the vernacular tongue are exceptions. French was long the universal medium. Even Humboldt wrote most of his works in that language; and it is not two years since one of the most distinguished Egyptian scholars of Prussia published his History of Egypt in French. The last representatives of this tendency are dying off. The days are ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... on his eminent services to navigation and meteorology. If Humboldt's work, published in 1817, was the first great contribution to meteorological science, it remained for Maury to make that ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... According to my calculations, this letter ought to reach Berlin two or three days before you. You have been already informed by the papers of the 7th inst. of the death of the illustrious Humboldt. It is a cause of mourning to science and to humanity. I have had the honor of writing to that great man several times in my life, and he once deigned to reply, in a letter which I piously cherish. If you happen to have an opportunity to buy some ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... In 1828 Frederick William III of Prussia requested the Berlin University to invite the most eminent natural philosophers to take part in a congress to be held in that city under the presidency of Alexander von Humboldt. Nicholas Chopin's friend Dr. Jarocki, the zoologist and professor at the Warsaw University, who had studied and obtained his degree at Berlin, was one of those who were honoured with an invitation. ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Ward, from Mexico. Dr. Dickson's Mitigation of Slavery. Franklin on The Peopling of Countries. Ramsay's Essay. Botham's Sugar Cultivation in Batavia. Marsden's History of Sumatra. Coxe's Travels. Dr. Anderson's Observations on Slavery. Storch's Political Economy. Adam Smith. J. Jeremies' Essays. Humboldt's Travels, etc., etc.) ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... consideration of this point, viz. that each king had a pyramid constructed for himself, which led to the theory that the pyramids were intended to serve as tombs. This theory was once very generally entertained. Thus we find Humboldt, in his remarks on American pyramids, referring to the tomb theory of the Egyptian pyramids as though it were open to no question. 'When we consider,' he says, 'the pyramidical monuments of Egypt, of Asia, and of the ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... northward, in Humboldt and the adjacent counties, whole hillsides are covered with rhododendron, making a glorious melody of bee-bloom in the spring. And the Western azalea, hardly less flowery, grows in massy thickets three to eight feet high around the edges of groves and ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... natural sciences exercises it.... The regulation of studies is all-important, and there is no one to regulate them, and people think that anyone can regulate them. We shall never do any good till we get a man like Guizot, or W. von Humboldt to deal with the matter, men who have the highest mental training themselves, and this we shall probably ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... are common in many parts of America: Humboldt met with them on the tableland of Mexico, and the Jesuit Falkner and other authors state that they occur at intervals over the vast plains extending from the mouth of the Plata to Rioja and Catamarca. (Azara "Travels" volume 1 page 55, considers that ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... these stand Siddhartha or Buddha, Mahomet, Martin Luther, John Knox and John Wesley. Then the great explorers and geographers of the world have not been noticed, among whom Herodotus, Strabo, Pliny, Vasco de Gama, Columbus and Humboldt ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... form this ascending column of air by kindling large fires which, Mr. Espy says, are known to produce rain. Humboldt speaks of a mysterious connexion between volcanoes and rain, and says that when a volcano bursts out in South America in a dry season, it sometimes changes it to a rainy one. The Indians of Paraguay, when their crops are threatened by drought, set fire to the ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous
... jaw," and then returned out of the window, and dropped helplessly in the area. During the rest of the day, wads and strips of soiled paper, purporting to be copies of "The Northern Star" of that morning's issue, were brought indignantly to the office. An admirable editorial on "The Resources of Humboldt County," which I had constructed the evening before, and which, I had reason to believe, might have changed the whole balance of trade during the ensuing year, and left San Francisco bankrupt at her wharves, was in this ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... necessitate a deal of research work, for I shall have to go back into history, first of all, to find out the course of study that produced Newton, Humboldt, Darwin, Shakespeare, Dante, Edison, Clara Barton, and the rest of them. If a roast-beef diet is responsible for Shakespeare, surely we ought to produce another Shakespeare, considering the excellence of the cattle we raise. I can easily discover the constituent elements ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... hollow-eyed, gaunt men, drawn by few weak animals. Women trudged wearily, carrying children. And the tales they brought were terrible. They told us of thousands they had left behind in the great desert of the Humboldt Sink, fighting starvation, disease, and the loss of cattle. Women who had lost their husbands from the deadly cholera were staggering on without food or water, leading their children. The trail was lined with dead mules and cattle. Some said that five thousand had perished ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... curved down beyond it, as the upper side of a horn curves over the lower, when one looks into the mouth. There is none of the many aspects of Nature more grand than this, which is so rarely seen, that I believe the only person who has ever described it is Humboldt, who saw it, looking from the Silla de Caraccas over the Caribbean Sea. It gives you the impression of standing on the edge of the earth, and looking off into space. From the mast-head, the ocean appears either flat or slightly concave, and ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... today to the continual and inevitably-invoked intervention of the State in the sphere of economics, while, according to his theories, industry should ask no more of the State than to be left in peace? Or the German Humboldt according to whom an "idle" State was the best kind of State? It is true that the second wave of Liberal economists were less extreme than the first, and Adam Smith himself opened the door—if only very cautiously—to let State intervention into the ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various
... towns which he names, he found that the medical men and others were convinced that the cholera was brought to them "somehow or other," an impression quite common in like cases, as we learn from Humboldt, and less to be wondered at in Russia than most places which could be mentioned. It will not be a misemployment of time to consider now the next document laid before the College, to enable them to form their opinion,—the Report of Dr. ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... In those lands, Humboldt has remarked, one misses the beauty of wild-flowers in the grass, because the luxuriance of vegetation develops everything into shrubs. The form and color are beautiful, "but, being too high above the soil, they disturb that harmonious proportion which characterizes the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... is only by exhausting as far as possible the significance of an individual phenomenon (is not that sentence a true scientific one in its magniloquence?) that you can discover any glimpse of the significance of the universal. Even men of boundless knowledge, like Humboldt, must have had once their speciality, their pet subject, or they would have, strictly speaking, no knowledge at all. The volcanoes of Mexico, patiently and laboriously investigated in his youth, were to Humboldt, possibly, the key of the whole Cosmos. I learn more, studying over and over ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... Temple at Paris: for to Buonaparte, through one of his industrious emissaries, Coleridge had become obnoxious, in consequence of an article written by him in the Morning Post. This salutary warning he obtained from the brother of the celebrated traveller, Humboldt, of whom he had enquired, whether he could pass through Switzerland and Germany, and return by that route to England. Humboldt then informed Coleridge, that having passed through Paris on his journey to Rome, he had ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... judging from my barometer—but I may have made an inaccurate calculation, and I have not Humboldt by me—that the ridge of the highest is fifteen hundred feet above the level of the sea, so that it would be next to impossible to join the two seas at this point by a canal with water in it. However, I expect to see a joint Stock Company set a—going some fine day yet ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... luminosity never witnessed elsewhere. In Egypt, we are told it is clearly 'visible every night, except when the light of the moon is too great, from January to June;' and in India its appearance is described as that of 'a pyramid of faint aurora-borealis like light' usually preceding the dawn. Humboldt tells us, that he has seen it shine with greater brightness than the Milky Way, from different parts of the coast of South America, and from places on the Andes more than 13,000 feet ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... figurative inscriptions, still exist and await an interpretation. In Central America are to be found a great variety of ruins of a higher order of architecture than any existing in America north of the Equator. Humboldt speaks of these remains in the following language: "The architectural remains found in the peninsula of Yucatan testify more than those of Palenque to an astonishing degree of civilization. They are situated between Valladolid ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... Creek for several days till we got to its head, on the great divide that separates the Snake River from the Humboldt. The second or third day up the creek we had a genuine surprise that put us all in the best of humor again. It was no less than the overtaking of the three wagons that left us in the South Pass, where we commenced packing. Captain Wadsworth's wagon ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... the last words of this sketch, the second part of Kosmos, by Alexander von Humboldt, came to my hand. Evidently the great author (who so well deserves immortality for his contributions to science) views the world also as a whole; and wherever in ancient or modern times, even a glimpse of this doctrine can be found, he quotes it and brings it to light. But yet, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... circumnavigation of Africa by a Phoenician ship, in the reign of Neco, about 610 B.C., is credited by Humboldt, Rennell, Heeren, Grote, and Rawlinson. Of their voyages to Cornwall for tin there is no question, and it is more than probable they sailed to the Baltic for amber. It has been even supposed that they anticipated Columbus ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... service, and the sweets of exemption tempted him to evade the three-year military course. The consequence was that he was prosecuted as a deserter, and sentenced in contumaciam. Afterwards, Alexander von Humboldt succeeded, by describing his services to science on his first expedition in Australia, in obtaining a pardon from the King. By a Cabinet Order, Leichhardt received permission to return to Prussia unpunished. When ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... and protuberant. It was, besides, deeply graven with wrinkles, and altogether was the most intellectual that I had ever seen. It bore some resemblance to that of Sir Isaac Newton, but still more to Humboldt or Webster. The eyes were large, deep-set, and lustrous with a light that seemed kindled in their own depths. In color they were gray, and whilst in conversation absolutely blazed with intellect. His mouth was large, but cut with all the precision of a sculptor's ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... have already given you several reasons for my wish that you should retain, in classifying birds, the now rejected order of Picae. I am going to read you a passage from Humboldt, which shows you what difficulties one may get ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... arrived from Berlin two days after my return to London. He, too, had enjoyed his holiday. During his stay in Berlin he had made the friendship of the distinguished Humboldt. Shenkel, the architect, had been very kind to him, and presented him with a set of drawings and engravings of his great architectural works, which Mr. Maudslay exhibited to me with much delight. ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... antiquity of which any record has been preserved are the Tower of Conira in Spain, which Humboldt mentions as the Iron Tower, and a magnificent stone Light-house at Capio, near the mouth of the Guadalquiver, that Strabo tells us about, on a rock ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... with Europeans it is a generally observed fact that the fairer individuals are more seriously affected by the bites of fleas and bugs than are darker ones. Dr Twining, in the British Association Reports for 1845, p. 79, cites some instances described by Humboldt, who says that the copper-coloured natives of the high plain of Bogoto, and at a lower level on the Magdalena river, were generally free from goitre. Professor Poffig, also cited by Dr Twining, states that on the east side of the Andes in Chile, in some of the races which live ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Jones in England, Herder and Goethe in Germany, who were pleased to speak of them in terms of highest admiration. It was the fashion at that time to speak of Kalidasa, as, for instance, Alexander von Humboldt did even in so recent a work as his Kosmos, as "the great contemporary of Virgil and Horace, who lived at the splendid court of Vikramaditya," this Vikramaditya being supposed to be the founder of the Samvat era, 56 B.C. But all this is now changed. Whoever the Vikramaditya ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... have already seen in "The Ring of Polycrates," Schiller's mode of dealing with classical subjects. In the poems that follow, derived from similar sources, the same spirit is maintained. In spite of Humboldt, we venture to think that Schiller certainly does not narrate Greek legends in the spirit of an ancient Greek. The Gothic sentiment, in its ethical depth and mournful tenderness, more or less pervades ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... that the barbarians had discovered in tobacco a sedative to promote their reveries and compose them to sleep, of which the hidalgos were as yet ignorant, but which they were soon to appropriate with avidity, and to use with equal zest. Humboldt says that it had been cultivated by the people of Orinoco from time immemorial, and was smoked all over America at the time of the Spanish Conquest,—also that it was first discovered by Europeans in Yucatan, in 1520, and was there called Petum. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... her daughter stopped before a bust of Washington. The daughter said, "Mother, who was Washington?" "Why, my dear, don't you know?" was the astonished reply. "He wrote the 'Sketch-Book.'" It was at the house of Baron von Humboldt, the Prussian minister, that Irving first met Madame de Stael, who was then enjoying the celebrity of "Delphine." He was impressed with her strength of mind, and somewhat astounded at the amazing flow of her conversation, and the question upon ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... and we are still going. We have twisted and tabled, criss-crossed our tracks, made fascinating and lengthy dives into the interior valleys in the hearts of Napa and Lake Counties, travelled the coast for hundreds of miles on end, and are now in Eureka, on Humboldt Bay, which was discovered by accident by the gold- seekers, who were trying to find their way to and from the Trinity diggings. Even here, the white man's history preceded them, for dim tradition says that the Russians once anchored here and hunted sea-otter before ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... necessity for calling attention at the outset to an ample and manifest equivalent for the deadly dose of confined exhalations taken daily by all civilized men. We perceive that that dose is not lost, like the Humboldt River, in a "sink," but reappears, like the wide-sown grass, in a perennial and universal crop of diseases, almost numberless and ever increasing in number, peculiar to house-dwellers. The trail of these plagues stops nowhere else; it leads straight to the imprisoned atmosphere in our artificial ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... I wrote an article on Alexander Humboldt. And in that article among other things I said, "This world of ours, round like an orange and slightly flattened at the Poles, has produced ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... of the Klamath River and Humboldt Bay, accompanying Vocabularies of their Languages. 25 ...
— Catalogue Of Linguistic Manuscripts In The Library Of The Bureau Of Ethnology. (1881 N 01 / 1879-1880 (Pages 553-578)) • James Constantine Pilling
... and traveller, born at Rochelle; companion of Alexander von Humboldt in his S. American scientific explorations; brought home a large collection of plants, thousands of species of them new to Europe; went out again to America, arrested by Dr. Francia in Paraguay as a spy, kept prisoner there for about nine years; released, settled in ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... 'the lecturer came before his countrymen with a well-earned European reputation, that his investigations had attracted much attention abroad, and in the matter of physical geography his researches were referred to in Humboldt's Cosmos, and his discovery and description of the egre or bore of the Tsien-tang River in China, occupies a large space in Maury's 'Physical Geography of the Sea.'' Besides giving the Society's cordial commendation of Dr. MACGOWAN'S ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the Glittering Plain, House of the Wolfings, etc. (Reeves & Turner); Early Romances, in Everyman's Library; Sigurd the Volsung, in Camelot Series; Socialistic writings (Humboldt Publishing Co.). Life: by ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... of old gentlemen. Mary still being rather silly[10] did not dine at table.... It was very awful to be alone, but at dinner I was happy enough as Loeven sat on one side of me. Humboldt was on the other. Afterwards came Fitz for a ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... sa logique n'est pas moins sure.—GUIZOT, Histoire de la Civilisation, 20. Der Keim fortschreitender Entwicklung ist, auch auf goettlichem Geheisse, der Menschheit eingepflanzt. Die Weltgeschichte ist der blosse Ausdruck einer vorbestimmten Entwicklung.—A. HUMBOLDT, January 2, 1842, Im Neuen Reich, 1872, i. 197. Das historisch grosse ist religioes gross; es ist die Gottheit selbst, die sich offenbart.—RAUMER, April 1807, ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton
... of the power, the majesty, and wisdom of that God who created it all. But images, like dolls, tricked out in the tawdry finery, are the objects which this people adore, and to whom they attribute more miraculous powers than were ever ascribed to the gods of their heathen ancestors. Humboldt says, "This people have changed their ceremonies, but not their ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... great minds of the world from Homer to Humboldt, Shakspere never had an equal or superior, standing on the pinnacle of the pyramid of human renown, and lifting his mammoth mental form above the other philosophers of the earth as Mount St. Elias soars above its ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... the 1st of May, is good and abundant upon this road as far as the South Pass, from whence there is a section of about 50 miles where it is scarce; there is also a scarcity upon the desert beyond the sink of the Humboldt. As large numbers of cattle pass over the road annually, they soon consume all the grass in these barren localities, and such as pass late in the season are likely to suffer greatly, and oftentimes perish from starvation. When I came over the road in August, 1858, ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... plurality vote, while the anti-machine element was contending for a mere plurality. The debate developed the fact, that any provision for other than a mere plurality vote would be unconstitutional. This service was performed by Senator Cutten of Humboldt[41]. Senator Cutten's clear presentation of this much discussed point, settled the vote percentage question right there. When the measure was under consideration by the Assembly Election Laws Committee, Grove L. Johnson ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... the earth's surface convulsed by this earthquake is estimated by Humboldt to have been four times greater than the whole extent of Europe. The shocks were felt not only over the Spanish peninsula, but in Morocco and Algeria they were nearly as violent. At a place about twenty-four miles from the city ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... mules, 7475 oxen, and 1653 cows." A letter from Sacramento dated September 10, 1850, gave this picture of the trail left by these travellers: "Many believed there are dead animals enough on the desert (of 45 miles) between Humboldt Lake and Carson River to pave a road the whole distance. We will make a moderate estimate and say there is a dead animal to every five feet, left on the desert this season. I counted 153 wagons within a mile and a half. Not half of those left were ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... this resemblance is, it will have but little weight if unsupported by other evidence. In conclusion, I would observe, that I never supposed Prince Madoc to be the discover of America, but that his voyage was induced by the knowledge that other lands existed in the great ocean (see Humboldt's Examen critique). The emblems found in America, and said to be crosses, are obviously the tau [cross symbol], or symbol of life, and can have ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 25. Saturday, April 20, 1850 • Various
... ago Wilhelm von Humboldt endeavoured to make Greek ideals the paramount influence in the higher schools of Germany. He and a group of friends had long felt indignant at the utilitarianism and shallowness of the work of the schools. In Greek literature, Greek philosophy and Greek ...
— The Eurhythmics of Jaques-Dalcroze • Emile Jaques-Dalcroze
... lies vast abroad on his times, uncomprehended by them, and requires a long local distance to be seen; suggest, as Aristotle, Bacon, Selden, Humboldt, that a certain vastness of learning, or quasi omnipresence of the human soul in nature, is possible. His superb speculations, as from a tower, over nature and arts, without ever losing sight of the texture and sequence of things, ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... both purposes combined. But the sense of smell is of extremely slight service, if any, even to the dark coloured races of men, in whom it is much more highly developed than in the white and civilised races. (36. The account given by Humboldt of the power of smell possessed by the natives of South America is well known, and has been confirmed by others. M. Houzeau ('Etudes sur les Facultes Mentales,' etc., tom. i. 1872, p. 91) asserts that he repeatedly made experiments, and proved that Negroes and Indians ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... be not only lengthened but strengthened. There are many instances of frail, feeble children who have developed into exceptionally strong men and women. One of the most noted is Von Humboldt, the great scientist, who as a child was very weak physically, and, he himself says, was mentally below the average, but who lived to the age of ninety, and developed one of the greatest minds of ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... body to do its bidding, and the best of Schiller's dramas, the greatest of his philosophical poems, were written in these years of illness. Thus Schiller proved himself the master of his fate, the captain of his soul. Only a few weeks before his death he wrote to Wilhelm von Humboldt, "Am Ende sind wir doch beide Idealisten, und wuerden uns schaemen, uns nachsagen zu lassen, dass die Dinge uns formten und wir nicht die Dinge." ("After all both of us are idealists and would be ashamed to have it reported of us that the things fashioned us and not we the ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... about seriously. Captain Symmes, a countryman of ours, proposed to Sir Humphry Davy, Humboldt, and Arago, to undertake the voyage! ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... said the silver-gray, interrupting him, "how is this? You, such a distinguished scholar—you still believe in Europe? Why, my dear sir, Europe no longer exists—certainly not as a quarter of the globe. It is simply, as Humboldt very truly remarks in his Cosmos, the septentrional ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... to pursue our way to any quarter of the habitable and uninhabitable world. With the history of geography, moreover, our proudest feelings are associated. Where are there names dearer to us than those of the noble and devoted Columbus, of Sebastian Cabot, of Cook, of Humboldt, and of Belzoni and La Perouse? Where shall we find the generous and heroic devotion of the explorers of Africa surpassed? Of Denham, of Clapperton, of Oudeny, and of the many who have sacrificed their valuable lives to the pestilence of that climate or ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... necessity for any argument on the subject: For, leaving out of the question the highest and most sacred of authorities, almost all respectable writers upon ethnology, including Buffon, Volney, Humboldt, &c., agree in assigning a common origin to all nations,—though the last deduces from many particulars, the conclusion that the American Indian was "isolated in the infancy of the world, from the rest of mankind."—Ancient Inhabitants of America, ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... was said by Wilhelm von Humboldt, that "it is worthy of special remark that when we are not too anxious about happiness and unhappiness, but devote ourselves to the strict and unsparing performance of duty, then happiness comes of itself." We carry each day nobly, doing the duty or ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... El Almirante.' In Spanish America, says M. de Humboldt, when El Almirante is pronounced without the addition of a name, that of Columbus is understood; as, from the lips of a Mexican, ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... is one of the most extensive in the world. Jackson and Washington Parks belong to the south division, whereas the western section inside the city limits comprises three; known as Humboldt, Garfield, and Douglas Parks. Their ornamentation is varied by superb flower-beds, fountains, statues, and monuments. Lincoln Park—including a zoological garden, and being romantically situated upon the lake shore in the northern portion of the ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... of Colonel Bliss, of the Adjutant General's department, which occurred July 5th, 1853, promoted me to the captaincy of a company then stationed at Humboldt Bay, California. The notice reached me in September of the same year, and I very soon started to join my new command. There was no way of reaching Humboldt at that time except to take passage on a San Francisco ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... action on the elements of modern civilization by this powerful though indirect channel as well as by the more obvious effects of the remnants of classic civilization which survived in Italy, Gaul, Britain, and Spain, after the irruption of the Germanic nations. [See Humboldt's Cosmos.] ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... Liedenbrock was honourably mentioned in colleges and learned societies. Humphry Davy, [2] Humboldt, Captain Sir John Franklin, General Sabine, never failed to call upon him on their way through Hamburg. Becquerel, Ebelman, Brewster, Dumas, Milne-Edwards, Saint-Claire-Deville frequently consulted him upon the most difficult problems in chemistry, a science which was indebted ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... beautifully said by William von Humboldt, that "exactly those joyful truths which are the most needful to man—the holiest and the greatest—lie open to the simplest, plainest mind; nay, are not unfrequently better, and even more entirely, grasped by such a one, than by him whose greater knowledge more dissipates ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... scientific instructions for the voyage drawn up by a committee of the Royal Society, however, there is a remarkable letter from Von Humboldt to Lord Minto, then First Lord of the Admiralty, in which, among other things, he dwells upon the significance of the researches into the microscopic composition of rocks, and the discovery of the great share which microscopic organisms take ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... all planetary, cometary, and asteroidal manifestations. For whenever these vital changes occur, the life-manifestations dependent thereon, must as inevitably follow as that infinitely diffused matter should be aggregated by gravity, or by what Humboldt calls, in his "Cosmos," the ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... passage of thought from man to man; it determines whether the writing of the people shall be hieroglyphic or alphabetic; it gives both life and form to the ideals of their art. It is a distinction that was clearly recognized by Wilhelm von Humboldt, when he laid down that the incorporative characteristic essential to all the American languages is the result of the exaltation of the imaginative over the ratiocinative elements ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates
... that glow of pleasurable activity which God gives to exertion directed to a comprehensible end. The feeblest mind is capable of assimilating knowledge with a satisfaction the same in kind as that which rewarded the maturest labors of Humboldt or Newton. There are sequences of facts every one of which, imparted in its natural order, brings an immediate interest. It is no nebulous scheme of combining instruction with amusement which is to be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... highest order of mind on the two continents. Sismondi published a paper on commercial wealth in 1803, and in 1810 a memoir on paper money, which he prepared to show how it might be suppressed in the Austrian dominions; Humboldt made a special study of the sources and quantity of the precious metals in the world, in which Mr. Gallatin aided him by investigation in America. Michel Chevalier was interested in the same subjects; surviving his two masters in the art and witnessing the marvelous effects of the additions ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... to a small number of students, and in a few cases only could Indian literature attract the eyes of men who, from the summit of universal history, survey the highest peaks of human excellence. Herder, Schlegel, Humboldt, and Goethe, discovered what was really important in Sanskrit literature. They saw what was genuine and original, in spite of much that seemed artificial. For the artificial, no doubt, has a wide place in Sanskrit literature. Everywhere we find systems, rules and models, castes and schools, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... who either benefited California or take high rank in national life or are otherwise worthy of perpetual commemoration. Hence we have a Berkeley street, a Buchanan, a Castro, a Fillmore, a Franklin, a Fremont, a Grant, a Hancock, a Harrison, a Hawthorne, and a Humboldt street. Juniper street is a memorial of Father Junipero Serra, founder of Franciscan Missions. Kepler takes us up to the stars, which shine beautifully over the lofty Sierras, California's eternal rampart; while Lafayette speaks to us of friendship and chivalry, still ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... brighter through the exertions of patriotic societies, such as the Tugendbund, or "League of Virtue," through the writings of men like Fichte and Arndt, and, perhaps most permanently of all, through the wonderful educational reforms, which, associated indissolubly with the name of Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835), gave to Prussia the basis of her present common- school system and to the world the great ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... "the species of large trees are much more numerous in North America than in Europe; in the United States there are more than one hundred and forty species that exceed thirty feet in height; in France there are but thirty that attain this size." Later botanists more than confirm his observations. Humboldt came to America to realize his youthful dreams of a tropical vegetation, and he beheld it in its greatest perfection in the primitive forests of the Amazon, the most gigantic wilderness on the earth, which he has so eloquently described. The geographer ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... quietly remarkable man, whom it would be difficult to readily or really understand. "He had unmistakably the manner peculiar to many great Germans, which, as I have elsewhere observed, is perceptible in the maintien and features of Goethe, Humboldt, Bismarck," and Brugsch, of Berlin (whom I learned to know in later years). Thalberg gave me the impression, which grew on me, of a man who knew many things besides piano-playing, and that he was ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... first truly modern men. That clear soul—who first collected from the literature of all countries evidence of the origin and progress of the sense of natural beauty, and himself, in his Ansichten der Natur, achieved the noblest masterpiece of description—Alexander von Humboldt, has not done full justice to Petrarch; and, following in the steps of the great reaper, we may still hope to glean a few ears ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... acquitted in 1846, and Mendelssohn, who was really innocent of the actual robbery, naturally thought it safe to return to Germany. He was, however, tried before the assize court of Cologne, and sentenced to five years' imprisonment. Alexander von Humboldt obtained a reduction of the sentence to one year, but on condition that Mendelssohn should leave Europe. He went, after his release from prison, to Constantinople, and when the Crimean war broke out joined the Turkish army, dying on the ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... confident that there was plenty of government hand. He talked of Honey Lake, of Shasta County, and of Humboldt. ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... superior, at least of late years, in the literary and scientific attainments of the wanderers whose works have been given to the world. Four among these stand pre-eminent, whose works, in very different styles, are at the head of European literature in this interesting department—Humboldt, Chateaubriand, Michaud, and Lamartine. Their styles are so various, and the impression produced by reading them so distinct, that it is difficult to believe that they have arisen in the same nation and age of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... was an accumulation of about two millions. Since the revolution, the exports have averaged 13,587,052 dollars, while the produce has decreased to eleven millions. This change was the natural consequence of the revolution. The favourable accounts of Humboldt excited a spirit of speculation that was wholly regardless of passing events; and the Act of Congress, facilitating the co-operation of foreigners with the natives, produced a mania which has been destructive to numberless individuals, who trusted too much to names. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 376, Saturday, June 20, 1829. • Various
... grasping organ are few and are widely scattered. Examples are the chameleon among lizards, our own little harvest mouse, and, pre-eminent above all, the American monkeys. To a howler, or spider-monkey, its long tail is a swing and a trapeze in its forest gymnasium. Humboldt saw (he says it) a cluster of them all hanging from a tree by one tail, which proceeded from a Sandow in the middle. I should like to see that too. It is worth noting, by the way, that no old-world monkey has attained to this application ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... designed by Michel Angelo! and how signal an instance is it of the progressive application of a true principle in science, that the contrivance whereby the South-Americans bridge the gorges of their mountains, by a pendulous causeway of twisted osiers and bamboo,—one of which, crossed by Humboldt, was a hundred and twenty feet long,—is identical with that which sustains the magnificent structure over the Niagara River! In a bridge the arch is triumphal, both for practical and commemorative ends: unknown to the Greeks and Egyptians, even the ancient Romans, it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... result in extreme indefiniteness of mental conception and almost entire absence of exactness. The experience of Captain Parry,[47] who found that the Eskimos made mistakes before they reached 7, and of Humboldt,[48] who says that a Chayma might be made to say that his age was either 18 or 60, has been duplicated by all investigators who have had actual experience among savage races. Nor, on the other hand, is the development of a numeral system an infallible index ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant
... the Paganini of the Humboldt Hotel. A naval character. His ecstasy upon hearing of the coming of the author to the Bar. Suggestion of a strait-jacket for him. "The only petticoated astonishment on this Bar". First dinner at the ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... epoch in the controversy. In truth, he seems to be the first who gave minute study to the original authorities and broke away from the tradition of Newfoundland. He fixed the landfall on the coast of Labrador; and Humboldt and Kohl added the weight of their great learning to his theory. Harrisse, who in his John and Sebastian Cabot had written in favor of Cape Breton, has, in his latest book, The Discovery of America, gone back to Labrador as his faith ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... intellectual circle." The address given for India was "Bombay Club." Miss Euphrosyne gazed up at the stony lineaments of Professor Delande, her marble-browed and flinty-hearted sire, locked in the cold chill of a steel engraving. He was as neutral as the busts of Buffon, Cuvier, Laplace, Humboldt, and Pestalozzi, which coldly furnished forth her sanctum. She thought of the eloquent eyed young Major and sadly sighed. She proceeded to enshrine him in her withered heart, and then wrote a crossed letter of many tender underlinings to her distant sister. And ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... received with cold distrust, Was only prized when he was laid in dust. And HUMBOLDT, the admired of all mankind, Of gentle manners and accomplished mind; Who scaled the lofty Andes' snow-clad towers, Where danger lurks, and fell destruction lowers. And COOK, who bravely sailed around the Earth— ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... he had made through his connection with the Lengefeld family was a little group of people in Erfurt. There were Karoline von Dacheroeden and her lover, Wilhelm von Humboldt, who was destined to become Schiller's intimate friend and also his faithful comrade in the field of aesthetic philosophizing. Then there was the influential Baron Karl Theodor von Dalberg, a brother of the Mannheim intendant. This elder Dalberg, who some years later became dubiously prominent ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... they visited was the Humboldt River, from which had come reports of the abundance of beavers. They began near the head waters of the stream, and carefully trapped down to the Great Basin. Meeting with only moderate success, ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... reading of the barometer which man has ever witnessed, and which indicates that we are at this moment farther from our mother earth than mortal has ever journeyed before. Humboldt and Bonpland ascended Chimborazo to a height of eighteen thousand five hundred and seventy-six feet. Gay-Lussac rose in his balloon to the much higher elevation of twenty-three thousand feet, only to be eclipsed by your own countryman, ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... produced by contact of a flint with the edge of a wheel kept in rapid motion. A "safety-lamp" had already, in 1813, been constructed by Dr. Clanny, the principle of which was forcing in air through water by bellows; but the machine was ponderous and complicated, and required a boy to work it. M. Humboldt had previously, in 1796, constructed a lamp for mines upon the same principle as that of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... Humboldt said of California: "The sky is constantly serene and of a deep blue, and without a cloud; and should any clouds appear for a moment at the setting of the sun, they display the most beautiful shades of violet, ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... between the Great Salt Lake and the Sierra. Behind them the still, heavy reach of water stretched, reflecting in mirrored clearness the mountains crowding on its southern rim. Before them the sage reached out to dim infinities of distance. The Humboldt ran nearby, sunk in a stony bed, its banks matted with growths of alder and willow. The afternoon was drawing to the magical sunset hour. Susan, lying by the door of her tent, could see below the growing western blaze the bowl of the earth filling with the first, ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... not far from the city, where a rivulet entered the sea, I observed a fact connected with a subject discussed by Humboldt. (1/7. "Personal Narrative" volume 5 part 1 page 18.) At the cataracts of the great rivers Orinoco, Nile, and Congo, the syenitic rocks are coated by a black substance, appearing as if they had been polished with plumbago. The layer is of extreme thinness; ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... the forest had almost a tropical aspect. I should like much to hear, if you make out, whether the N. or S. boundaries of a plant are the most restricted; I should have expected that the S. would be, in the temperate regions, from the number of antagonist species being greater. N.B. Humboldt, when in London, told me of some river (14/3. The Obi (see "Flora Antarctica," page 211, note). Hooker writes: "Some of the most conspicuous trees attain either of its banks, but do not cross them.") in N.E. Europe, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... to talk over whether to take a new route which had been opened up by Mr. Lansford Hastings, called the Hastings Cut-off. This route passed along the southern shore of the Great Salt Lake, then joined the Old Fort Hall emigrant road on the Humboldt River. The new route was said to shorten the trip by about three hundred miles, and Virginia says in her diary, "Father was so eager to reach California quickly, that he was strongly in favor of taking the Cut-off, while others were equally ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... in a different rational vesture. The peoples saw in it only the suppression of the religious and political despotisms and hierarchies under which they had so often suffered. Writers like Goethe and thinkers like Kant imagined that they saw in it the triumph of reason. Foreigners like Humboldt came to France "to breathe the air of liberty and to assist at the obsequies ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... assured by Mr. Blyth, that wild specimens of the Gallus bankiva, brought from the countries east of the Bay of Bengal, are far more easily tamed than those of India; nor is this an unparalleled fact, for, as Humboldt long ago remarked, the same species sometimes evinces a more tameable disposition in one country than in another. If we suppose that the G. bankiva was first tamed in Malaya and afterwards imported into India, we can understand an observation made to me by Mr. Blyth, that the domestic fowls ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... with it." He hated French meters, and his teacher vowed he had no soul for poetry. He idled away his time at Bonn, and was "horribly bored" by the "odious, stiff, cut-and-dried tone" of the leathery professors. Humboldt was feeble as a child and "had less facility in his studies than most children." "Until I reached the age of sixteen," he says, "I showed little inclination for scientific pursuits." He was essentially self-taught, and acquired most of his knowledge rather late in life. At nineteen he had never ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... the island of Sicily. It measures one hundred and ninety feet in circumference. It is a chestnut-tree, and still bears fruit in abundance. The oldest tree is believed to be a famous cypress still growing in Oaxaca, Mexico. Humboldt saw it in 1855, when he recorded the measurement as being one hundred and twenty-six feet in circumference and three hundred and eighty-two feet between the out-spread branches. In Nevada, United States, stands what is well known as the "Dead Giant Redwood Tree," which measures one hundred and ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... Galen should have been the physician and friend of the imperial philosopher Marcus Aurelius. The Arabs gave laws in various branches of knowledge to those whom their arms had invaded, or the terror of their spreading dominion had reached, and the point from which they started was, as Humboldt acknowledges, "the study of medicine, by which they long ruled the Christian Schools," and to which they added the department of ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... not elapsed, however, before the earth was again troubled, this time with strong convulsions and thunderings, upon which the masters took refuge in their great tower, closing the people out. The poor slaves fled to the Humboldt River, and, getting into canoes, paddled for life from the awful sight behind them; for the land was tossing like a troubled sea, and casting up fire, smoke, and ashes. The flames went up to the very heavens, and melted many stars, SO THAT THEY RAINED DOWN IN MOLTEN METAL ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... authentic writers upon the subject that this people enjoyed a large degree of civilization; the ruins of temples supposed to have been built by them in various parts of the country, especially in Yucatan, also prove this. Humboldt says that in 648 A. D. the Toltecs had a solar year more perfect than that of the Greeks and Romans. Other-writers tell us that they were a worthy people, averse to war, allied to virtue, to cleanliness, and good manners, detesting falsehood and treachery. ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... correlation of organs, but Darwin's most characteristic contribution was not less fundamental,—it was the idea of the correlation of organisms. This, again, was not novel; we find it in the works of naturalists like Christian Conrad Sprengel, Gilbert White, and Alexander von Humboldt, but the realisation of its full import was ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... theologize by means of astronomy? And if experimentalists would be sure to cry out, did I attempt to install the Thomist philosophy in the schools of astronomy and medicine, why may not I, when Divine Science is ostracized, and La Place, or Buffon, or Humboldt, sits down in its chair, why may not I fairly protest against their exclusiveness, and demand the emancipation ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... with Goethe, he was happy in a kindly connexion with many other estimable men, both in literary and in active life. Dalberg, at a distance, was to the last his friend and warmest admirer. At Jena, he had Schuetz, Paul, Hufland, Reinhold. Wilhelm von Humboldt, also, brother of the celebrated traveller, had come thither about this time, and was now among his closest associates. At Weimar, excluding less important persons, there were still Herder and Wieland, to divide his attention with Goethe. And what to his affectionate heart must have been ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... contact of air, appears to be nearly free from air. Gay-Lussac and Humboldt, however, affirm, that it contains nearly the usual proportion ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... heart of the city was only about 7 ft. above the lake, but the level was greatly raised—in some places more than 10 ft.—over a large area, between 1855 and 1860. The West Side, especially in the north-west near Humboldt Park, is much higher (extreme 75 ft.). A narrow inlet from the lake, the Chicago river, runs W. from its shore about a mile, dividing then into a north and a south branch, which run respectively to the N.W. and the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... past treaties. Their songs were inexhaustible. An instance is on record where an Indian sang two hundred on various subjects.[18-1] Such a fact reminds us of a beautiful expression of the elder Humboldt: "Man," he says, "regarded as an animal, belongs to one of the singing species; but his notes are always associated with ideas." The youth who were educated at the public schools of ancient Mexico—for that realm, so ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... and they boldly repulse the attacks of most carnivores and birds of prey. Even eagles do not dare attack them. They plunder our fields always in bands—the old ones taking care for the safety of the commonwealth. The little tee-tees, whose childish sweet faces so much struck Humboldt, embrace and protect one another when it rains, rolling their tails over the necks of their shivering comrades. Several species display the greatest solicitude for their wounded, and do not abandon a wounded comrade during a retreat till they have ascertained ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... color, while Baines measured some in this region who were five feet six inches in height. In disposition the Bushmen are strikingly wild, malicious, and intractable, while their cerebral development is classed by Humboldt as belonging to almost the lowest ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... fulfilment with the contemporaneous visit of a South American traveller to the deserted ruins of London.[4] His writings have won favor with hosts of readers, and they have received the homage of learned and profound inquirers, like Humboldt and Guizot. They have merits that are recognizable at a glance, and they have also merits that will bear the closest examination. They occupy a field in which they have no compeers. They are the products of a fertile soil and of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... of art, it is supposed that a communication across may be effected. These are five in number, and the facilities for the undertaking which each affords, have been discussed by a few modern travellers, commencing with Humboldt. On a close investigation into the subject, it will, however, appear evident, that although the cutting of a canal on some point or order, may be within the compass of human exertion, still the undertaking ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... more like the travels of Von Humboldt than any book we have lately read. The writer is a man of science and observation, and the book we recommend ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... unfortunate, civilians as well as soldiers. His company was destined to Fort Vancouver, in Oregon Territory, where he remained nearly a year, until, in order, he received promotion to a captaincy in a company stationed at Humboldt Bay in California. Here he remained until 1854, when he resigned from the army, because, as he says, he saw no prospect of being able to support his family on his pay, if he brought them—there were then two ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen
... in all fields of activity, Germany during the nineteenth century produced a long series of famous or notorious homosexual persons. At the one end we find people of the highest intellectual distinction, such as Alexander von Humboldt, whom Naecke, a cautious investigator, stated that he had good ground for regarding as an invert.[78] At the other end we find prosperous commercial and manufacturing people who leave Germany to find solace in the free and ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... for the reverend gentleman to continue his comparisons, and find eminent Christians to put, for instance, along with Humboldt, the Shakespeare of science; somebody by the side of Darwin, as a naturalist; some gentleman in England to stand with Tyndall, or Huxley; some Christian German to stand with Haeckel and Helmholtz. May be he knows some Christian statesman that he would compare with Gambetta. I would ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... when he does possess the modern firearm, he is capable of doing with it, the achievements of the Modocs in their volcanic stronghold will attest. But these were few, and soon went down. The extinction of the tribes west and south of the Rio Grande and the Humboldt cannot be many years postponed. The red rover of that region will disappear as a combatant in the same way, and before the same weapon, as his brother nomad of Algeria, the earliest victim of the conoidal bullet. The spherical ball has ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... made and entered into this 14th day August, A.D. 1860 between A. J. Houstis as county Judge of Humboldt County for and in behalf of a certain Indian boy called and known by the name of "Smoky" of the first part and Austin Wiley, of the said county of the second part. That Whereas the said Austin Wiley had in his possession and under his control a certain Indian boy named "Smoky" And whereas the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... was to be found in the Minor States, in Bavaria and Baden, and in Wuertemberg, which received a Constitution a few days before the enrolment of the decrees of Carlsbad. In Prussia the reaction carried everything before it. Humboldt, the best and most liberal of the Ministers, resigned, protesting in vain against the ignominious part which the King had determined to play. He was followed by those of his colleagues whose principles were dearer to them than their places. Hardenberg remained in office, a dying man, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... cities or in their vicinity, the effect was generally ascribed to the rest of animated beings, while in localities where such an explanation was inapplicable, it was supposed to arise from a favourable direction of the prevailing wind. Baron Humboldt was particularly struck with this phenomenon when he first heard the rushing of the great cataracts of the Orinoco in the plain which surrounds the mission of the Apures. These sounds he regarded ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 20, No. 562, Saturday, August 18, 1832. • Various
... volcanoes of considerable magnitude in the old world, are in the vicinity of the sea; and in those where the sea is more distant, as in the volcanoes of South America, the water may be supplied from great subterranean lakes; for Humboldt states that some of them throw up quantities of fish. The author acknowledges, however, that the hypothesis of the nucleus of the globe being composed of matter liquefied by heat, offers a still more simple solution of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction—Volume 13 - Index to Vol. 13 • Various |
