The Invention of Nature (77 page)

sequoias (trees), 23.1, 23.2, 23.3

Sethe, Anna see Haeckel, Anna

Shelley, Mary: Frankenstein

Siberia: AH in, 16.1; anthrax epidemic, 16.2, 16.3; plant distribution, 18.1

Siberian Highway, 16.1, 16.2, 16.3

Sicily: Haeckel in

Sierra Club (USA), 23.1, 23.2

Silla (mountain, Venezuela)

Slavery Abolition Act (Britain, 1834), 17.1

slaves and slavery: in South America, 4.1, 8.1; and colonialism, 8.2; in USA, 8.3, 12.1, 15.1, 20.1; AH condemns, 8.4, 12.2, 20.2; Bolívar frees, 12.3; abolished in Britain, 17.1; abolished in USA, 23.1

Smithsonian Institution, Washington

Somerville, Mary, 14.1; On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences, 18.1

South America see Latin America

Southey, Robert, 9.1, 13.1

Spain: issues passport to AH, 3.1, 3.2; Latin American empire, 3.3, 6.1, 8.1, 8.2, 12.1, 12.2; and border dispute with USA, 8.3; threatened by Napoleon, 9.1, 12.3; loses South American colonies, 12.4, 12.5; sends fleet to South America, 12.6; AH criticizes rule in Latin America, 12.7

species: evolution and distribution of, 17.1, 18.1; see also plants

Stegner, Wallace

Sturm und Drang (‘Storm and Stress’ movement)

sugar: cultivation

Sullivan, Louis

Talleyrand, Charles-Maurice de

tapirs

Tegel (Prussia), 1.1, 1.2, 11.1, 18.1, 20.1, 22.1

Tenerife (Canary Islands), 3.1, 10.1, 17.1, 22.1

Thames, River: tunnel

Thoreau, Henry David: influenced by AH, prl.1, prl.2, 18.1, 19.1; reads AH’s View of Nature, 10.1; cabin, 19.2, 19.3; lives beside Walden Pond, 19.4, 19.5; in Concorde, Mass., 19.6; background and career, 19.7, 19.8; and AH’s Cosmos, 19.9, 19.10, 19.11; on nature’s cycles, 19.12, 19.13; relations with Emerson, 19.14, 19.15, 19.16; influence of nature on, 19.17; on death, 19.18; and local deforestation, 19.19; character and appearance, 19.20; and animals, 19.21, 19.22; appearance and manner, 19.23; love of children, 19.24; affinity with nature, 19.25, 19.26, 19.27, 19.28; nature records, 19.29, 19.30; lectures, 19.31; writing, 19.32, 19.33; notebooks and journals, 19.34, 19.35; library, 19.36; walks, 19.37, 19.38; on unity of nature, 19.39; Transcendentalism, 19.40; ideas and beliefs, 19.41; adopts new daily routine, 19.42; on science, 19.43; and imagination, 19.44; on thawing of embankment, 19.45; calls for preservation of forests, 21.1; and Muir, 23.1; The Maine Woods, 23.2, 23.3; Walden, 19.46, 19.47, 19.48, 19.49, 19.50, 23.4; A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, 19.51

Thoreau, John

Thornton, William

Tierra del Fuego, 17.1, 17.2, 17.3

Tiffany, Louis Comfort

Tilsit, Treaty of (1807)

Timber Culture Act (USA, 1873), 21.1

Times, The, 20.1

titi monkeys

Tobolsk (Russia)

Tocqueville, Alexis de

Toro, Fernando del, n

Torrey, John

Trafalgar, battle of (1805)

Transcendentalists, 2.1, 19.1

Turin (Italy)

Turner, Frederick Jackson

United States of America: celebrates AH centenary (1869), prl.1; AH travels to (1804), 8.1; and Louisiana Purchase, 8.2, 12.1; agrarian economy, 8.3, 8.4, 8.5; economic prosperity, 8.6; border with Mexico, 8.7; slavery in, 8.8, 12.2, 15.1, 20.1; exports to South America, 12.3; neutrality in South American revolution, 12.4; Buffon criticizes, 12.5; expansion, 15.2; influence of Cosmos in, 18.1; territorial gains in Northwest and Southwest, 19.1; war with Mexico, 19.2, 20.2; technological advances, 19.3, 21.1; travellers visit AH in Berlin, 20.3; telegraphic link with Europe, 20.4; environment despoiled, 21.2, 21.3, 23.1; Civil War (1861–6), 21.4, 23.2; Marsh’s influence in, 21.5; abolishes slavery, 23.3; transcontinental railways, 23.4; national parks, 23.5

Ural Mountains

Valdivia (Chile)

Valencia, Lake (Venezuela), prl.1, 4.1, 4.2, 5.1, 8.1, 8.2, 16.1, 21.1

Venezuela: AH in, 3.1; declares independence, 12.1; Bolívar invades, 12.2; Spain reconquers, 12.3; Bolívar returns to from Haiti, 12.4; Bolívar’s campaign in, 12.5

Venus, transit of

Vermont: Marsh in, 21.1, 21.2

Verne, Jules, 10.1, 20.1

Vesuvius, Mount

Viceroyalties (Spanish Latin American)

Victoria, Queen of Great Britain

Vienna, Congress of (1815)

Views of Nature (AH): writing, 10.1; popular appeal, 15.1; Darwin requests copy, 17.1; on evolution of species, 17.2; Thoreau reads, 19.1, 19.2; revised edition, 20.1; Haeckel reads, 22.1, 22.2; Muir reads and marks, 23.1, 23.2, 23.3

volcanoes: AH’s interest in, prl.1, 3.1, 6.1, 7.1, 9.1, 15.1

Volta, Alessandro, prl.1, 10.1

Voltaire, Marie François Arouet, 1.1, 14.1

Voyage to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent (AH), 10.1, 11.1, 14.1

Vues des Cordillères et monuments des peuples indigènes de l’Amérique (AH), 11.1, 12.1, 13.1, 14.1, 22.1

Vulcanists, 6.1, 15.1

Vulpius, Christiane

Walden Pond, Massachusetts, 19.1, 19.2, 19.3

Washington, DC, 8.1, 8.2, 9.1

Washington, George, 8.1, 8.2; birthday celebrations (1859), 20.1

Watt, James

Wedgwood, Josiah

Wedgwood, Josiah II

Weimar: Goethe in, 2.1, 2.2

Wellesley, Richard Colley, Marquess

Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, prl.1st Duke of, 11.1

Werner, Abraham Gottlieb, 15.1

Westphalia, Kingdom of, 10.1, 15.1

Whewell, William

Whitman, Walt, 20.1; Leaves of Grass, 18.1

Wilberforce, Samuel, Bishop of Oxford

Wilhelm I, Emperor of Germany (earlier Prince of Prussia), 10.1, 20.1, 22.1

William IV, King of Great Britain

William, Prince of Prussia see Wilhelm I, Emperor of Germany

Williamson, Hugh

Wislizenus, Frederick

Wordsworth, William: influenced by AH, prl.1, 13.1; The Excursion, 13.2

Yekaterinburg (Russia), 16.1, 16.2

Yellowstone National Park (Wyoming)

Yosemite National Park

Yosemite Valley (California), 23.1, 23.2

Zea, Father Bernardo

Zea, Francisco Antonio

Chimborazo in today’s Ecuador was believed to be the highest mountain in the world when Humboldt climbed the volcano in 1802. Chimborazo inspired Simón Bolívar to write a poem about the liberation of the Spanish colonies in Latin America. (Illustration Credit ins.1)

Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland collecting plants at the foot of Chimborazo

Humboldt talking to one of the indigenous people in Turbaco (today’s Colombia) en route to Bogotá (Illustration Credit ins.3)

Humboldt and his small team at Cayambe volcano near Quito

This painting of Humboldt and Bonpland in a jungle hut was completed in 1856, more than fifty years after their expedition. Humboldt didn’t like it because the instruments depicted were inaccurate. (Illustration Credit ins.5)

Thomas Jefferson in 1805, just after he had met Humboldt in Washington, DC. Unlike the more stately portraits of George Washington, Jefferson is purposefully ‘rustic’ to convey an image of simplicity. (Illustration Credit ins.6)

Humboldt’s spectacular three-foot by two-foot Naturgemälde which was part of his Essay on the Geography of Plants (Illustration Credit ins.7)

A fragment of an ancient Aztec manuscript that Humboldt purchased in Mexico (Illustration Credit ins.8)

Taken from an unauthorized atlas that illustrated Humboldt’s Cosmos, a map showing fossil strata through the ages of earth, as well as the subterraneous connections of volcanoes (Illustration Credit ins.9)

A spread from an unauthorized atlas that accompanied Cosmos, showing different vegetation zones and plant families across the globe (Illustration Credit ins.10)

American artist Frederic Edwin Church followed in Humboldt’s footsteps through South America and combined scientific details with sweeping views. The exhibition of his magnificent five-foot by ten-foot The Heart of the Andes caused a sensation; when Church was ready to ship the painting to Berlin, he received the news that Humboldt had just died. (Illustration Credit ins.11)

Humboldt in 1843, two years before he published the first volume of Cosmos (Illustration Credit ins.12)

According to Humboldt, this illustration was a very faithful representation of the library in his Berlin apartment in Oranienburger Straße. He welcomed his many visitors either in the library or in his study, just visible through the door. (Illustration Credit ins.13)

Ernst Haeckel’s drawings of medusae. He named the large one in the centre Desmonema Annasethe after his wife Anna Sethe. The caption read that he owed her ‘the happiest years of his life’. (Illustration Credit ins.14)

Yosemite Valley, California. John Muir referred to the Sierra Nevada as the ‘Range of Light’. (Illustration Credit ins.15)

Table of Contents

Cover

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

Maps

Author’s Note

PART I. DEPARTURE: EMERGING IDEAS

1. Beginnings

2. Imagination and Nature: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Humboldt

3. In Search of a Destination

PART II. ARRIVAL: COLLECTING IDEAS

4. South America

5. The Llanos and the Orinoco

6. Across the Andes

7. Chimborazo

8. Politics and Nature: Thomas Jefferson and Humboldt

PART III. RETURN: SORTING IDEAS

9. Europe

10. Berlin

11. Paris

12. Revolutions and Nature: Simón Bolívar and Humboldt

13. London

14. Going in Circles: Maladie Centrifuge

PART IV. INFLUENCE: SPREADING IDEAS

15. Return to Berlin

16. Russia

17. Evolution and Nature: Charles Darwin and Humboldt

18. Humboldt’s Cosmos

19. Poetry, Science and Nature: Henry David Thoreau and Humboldt

PART V. NEW WORLDS: EVOLVING IDEAS

20. The Greatest Man Since the Deluge

21. Man and Nature: George Perkins Marsh and Humboldt

22. Art, Ecology and Nature: Ernst Haeckel and Humboldt

23. Preservation and Nature: John Muir and Humboldt

Notes

A Note on Humboldt’s Publications

Sources and Bibliography

Index

Illustrations