Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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I Had In View A Two-Fold Purpose In The Travels Of Which I Now
Publish The Historical Narrative.
I wished to make known the
countries I had visited; and to collect such facts as are fitted to
elucidate a science of which we as yet possess scarcely the
outline, and which has been vaguely denominated Natural History of
the World, Theory of the Earth, or Physical Geography.
The last of
these two objects seemed to me the most important. I was
passionately devoted to botany and certain parts of zoology, and I
flattered myself that our investigations might add some new species
to those already known, both in the animal and vegetable kingdoms;
but preferring the connection of facts which have been long
observed, to the knowledge of insulated facts, although new, the
discovery of an unknown genus seemed to me far less interesting
than an observation on the geographical relations of the vegetable
world, on the migrations of the social plants, and the limit of the
height which their different tribes attain on the flanks of the
Cordilleras.
The natural sciences are connected by the same ties which link
together all the phenomena of nature. The classification of the
species, which must be considered as the fundamental part of
botany, and the study of which is rendered attractive and easy by
the introduction of natural methods, is to the geography of plants
what descriptive mineralogy is to the indication of the rocks
constituting the exterior crust of the globe.
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