ned there five months, but could endure it
no longer, and he begged so hard that his mother allowed him to go to
Freyberg and study geology with Werner, with a view of obtaining a
situation in the Administration of Mines. See what combinations of
circumstances prepare him for his great career, as no other young man
ever was prepared. At Freyberg he received the private instruction of
Werner, the founder of modern geology, and he had as his fellow-student
no less a man than Leopold Von Buch, then a youth, to whom, at a later
period, Humboldt himself dedicated one of his works, inscribing it "to
the greatest geologist," as he was till the day of his recent death.
From Freyberg he made frequent excursions into the Hartz and
Fichtelgeberg and surrounding regions, and these excursions ended in the
publication of a small work upon the subterranean flora of Freyberg
("Flora Subterranea Fribergensis"), in which he described especially
those cryptogamous plants, or singular low and imperfect formations
which occur in the deep mines. But here ends his period of pupilage. In
1792 he was appointed an officer of the mines (Oberbergmeister). He went
to Beyreuth as director of the operations in those mines belonging to
the Frankish provinces of Prussia. Yet he was always wandering in every
direction, seeking for information and new subjects of study. He visited
Vienna, and there heard of the discoveries of Galvani, with which he
made himself familiar; went to Italy and Switzerland, where he became
acquainted with the then celebrated Professors Jurine and Pictet, and
with the illustrious Scarpa. He also went to Jena, formed an intimate
acquaintance with Schiller and Goethe, and also with Loder, with whom he
studied anatomy. From that time he began to make investigations of his
own, and these investigations were in a line which he has never
approached since, being experiments in physiology. He turned his
attention to the newly-discovered power by which he tested the activity
of organic substances; and it is plain, from his manner of treating the
subject, that he leaned to the idea that the chemical process going on
in the living body of animals furnished a clew to the phenomena of life,
if it was not life itself. This may be inferred from the title of the
book published in 1797--"Ueber die gereizte Muskel und Nervenfaser, mit
Vermuthungen ueber den chemischen Process des Lebens, in Thieren und
Pflanzen."

In these explanations of the ph