ose that can read between the lines might
find them there; and certainly there we find them. His aspiration has
been to present to the world a picture of the physical world from which
he would exclude everything that relates to the turmoil of human
society, and to the ambitions of individual men. A life so full, so
rich, is worth explaining in every respect, and it is really instructive
to see with what devotion he pursues his work. As long as he is a
student he is really a student and learns faithfully, and learns
everything he can reach. And he continues so for twenty-three years. He
is not one of those who is impatient to show that he has something in
him, and with premature impatience utters his ideas, so that they become
insuperable barriers to his independent progress in later life. Slowly
and confident of his sure progress, he advances, and while he learns he
studies also independently of those who teach him. He makes his
experiments, and to make them with more independence he seeks for an
official position. During five years he is a business man, in a station
which gives him leisure. He is superintendent of the mines, but the
superintendent of the mines who can do much as he pleases; and while he
is thus officially engaged journeying and superintending, he prepares
himself for his independent researches. And yet it will be seen he is
thirty years of age before he enters upon his American travels--those
travels which will be said to have been the greatest undertaking ever
carried to a successful issue, if judged by the results; they have as
completely changed the basis of physical science as the revolution which
took place in France about the same time has changed the social
condition of that land. Having returned from these travels to Paris,
there begins in his life a period of concentrated critical studies. He
works his materials, and he works them with an ardor and devotion which
are untiring; and he is not anxious to appear to have done it all
himself. Oltmann is called to his aid to revise his astronomical
observations, and his barometrical measurements by which he has
determined the geographical position of seven hundred different points
and the altitude of more than four hundred and fifty of them.

The large collection of plants which Bonpland had begun to illustrate,
but of which his desire of seeing the tropics again has prevented the
completion he intrusts to Kunth. He has also brought home animals of
d