Descriptions of nature ought not
to be deficient in a tone of life-like truthfulness, while the mere
enumeration of a series of general results is productive of a no less
wearying impression than the elaborate accumulation of the individual data
of observation. I scarcely venture to hope that I have succeeded in
satisfying these various requirements of composition, or that I have myself
avoided the shoals and breakers which I have known how to indicate to
others. My faint hope of success rests upon the special indulgence which
the German public have bestowed upon a small work bearing the title of
'Ansichten der Natur', which I published soon after my return from Mexico.
This work treats, under general points of view, of separate branches of
physical geography (such as the forms of vegetation, grassy plains, and
deserts). The effect produced by this small volume has doubtlessly been
more powerfully manifested in the influence it has exercised on the
sensitive minds of the young, whose imaginative faculties are so strongly
manifested, than by means of any thing which it could itself impart. In the
work on the Cosmos on which I am now engaged, I have endeavored to show, as
in that entitled 'Ansichten der Natur', that a certain degree of scientific
completeness in the treatment of individual facts is not wholly incompatible
with a picturesque animation of style.
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