The Invention of Nature (76 page)

Humboldt, Caroline von (née Dachröden; Wilhelm’s wife): view of AH, 1.1; AH visits in Jena, 2.1, 3.1; in Paris, 3.2, 3.3, 9.1; on AH’s attachments to men, 6.1; death of children, 9.2, 9.3; practical concern for AH, 9.4; in Rome, 9.5; Coleridge visits in Rome, 13.1; concern over AH’s generosity being exploited, 14.1; on AH’s lecturing in Berlin, 15.1, 15.2; death from cancer, 16.1

Humboldt, Marie Elisabeth von (AH’s mother): relations with sons, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3; death, 3.1, 3.2

Humboldt, Wilhelm von (AH’s older brother): upbringing, 1.1; intellectual interests, 1.2; attends Göttingen university, 1.3; AH visits in Jena, 2.1, 2.2; translates Aeschylus, 2.3; in Schiller’s garden, Jena, 2.4; and AH’s preoccupation with Kant, 2.5; and mother’s death, 3.1; moves to Paris, 3.2, 3.3; AH writes to from Andes, 6.1; on AH’s mental processes, 7.1; and AH’s return to Paris, 9.1; death of children, 9.2, 9.3; as Prussian Minister at Vatican, 9.4; on AH’s gentler side, 9.5; and Caroline’s concern for AH in Paris, 9.6; AH visits in Rome, 9.7; earnings, 10.1; disapproves of AH’s staying in Paris in war, 10.2, 11.1, 11.2; misgivings over AH’s relations with Arago, 11.3; as Prussian Minister of Education, 11.4, 15.1; moves to Vienna as Prussian ambassador, 11.5; as Prussian Minister to Britain, 13.1, 14.1; relations with AH, 13.2, 15.2, 18.1; leaves London for Berlin, 14.2, 15.3; on AH’s lectures in Berlin, 15.4; letter from ageing Goethe, 15.5; passion for languages, 15.6; and wife’s death, 16.1; letters from AH in Russia, 16.2, 16.3, 16.4; AH snubs attempt to find post for, 18.2; founds University of Berlin, 18.3; withdraws to Tegel, 18.4; decline and death, 18.5

Humboldt Current

Humboldtia laurifolia

hummingbirds

Hunter, John

Huxley, Aldous: Beyond the Mexique Bay

Huxley, Thomas Henry, 22.1

Imagination: AH’s, 1.1, 13.1; and nature, 2.1, 2.2, 10.1, 10.2, bm1.1; AH on as balm, 4.1, 6.1; Bolívar’s, 9.1, 12.1; and reason, 11.1, 13.2; and science, 13.3, 18.1, 19.1; as creative force, 18.2; Thoreau on, 19.2

Imperial Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg

India: AH’s plan to visit frustrated, 13.1, 13.2, 13.3, 14.1, 15.1

Indianapolis, 23.1, 23.2

indigo: cultivation

International Governmental Panel on Climate Change (United Nations)

isotherms, prl.1, 14.1

Italy: AH visits with Gay-Lussac, 9.1; Marsh in, 21.1; unification, 21.2; Haeckel in, 22.1, 22.2

jaguars, 5.1, 17.1

Jamaica: Bolívar in

Jardin des Plantes, Paris, 9.1, 9.2, 11.1

Java: Haeckel visits, 22.1, 22.2

Jefferson, Maria (Thomas’s daughter): death

Jefferson, Thomas: on AH, prl.1; concept of liberty and democracy, prl.2, 8.1; AH meets, 8.2, 8.3, 8.4, 19.1; appearance, 8.5; qualities and lifestyle, 8.6, 8.7; favours agrarian economy, 8.8, 8.9, 8.10; in Washington, 8.11; agricultural practices, 8.12; and slavery in USA, 8.13, 12.1; and AH’s plan to explore North America, 9.1; interest in South American revolutions, 12.2, 12.3; refutes Buffon’s disparagement of America, 12.4; AH recommends Portuguese botanist to, 14.1; death, 15.1; Notes on the State of Virginia, 8.14

Jena (Germany), prl.1, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3; battle of (1806), 10.1

Johnson, Andrew

Johnson, Robert Underwood

Journal des Débâts, 14.1

Kaliningrad see Königsberg

Kalmyk people

Kant, Immanuel, 2.1, 10.1, 13.1, 19.1; Critique of Pure Reason, 2.2; Physische Geographie, 2.3

Karl August, Duke of Saxe-Weimar, 2.1, 2.2

Kazakh (or Kirghiz) Steppe

Keats, John

kelp: in food chain

keystone species

Klein, Naomi: This Changes Everything

knowledge: and internal and external world

Königsberg (now Kaliningrad), 2.1, 10.1, 16.1

Kosmos (magazine)

Kunth, Gottlob Johann Christian, 1.1, 1.2, 14.1

Kunth, Karl Sigismund, 11.1, 14.1

Kyrgyz (people)

Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste, 2.1, 9.1, 17.1, 17.2

language: Wilhelm on

Lanzarote (Canary islands)

Laplace, Pierre-Simon, Marquis de, 2.1, 9.1, 11.1; The Mechanism of the Heavens, 14.1

Latin America: AH travels in, prl.1, 3.1, 6.1, 7.1; Spanish possessions and colonization, 3.2, 6.2, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 12.1; creoles in, 4.1, 9.1; indigenous people, 5.1; ancient civilizations, 7.2, 12.2; slavery and free labour, 8.4, 17.1; revolutionary beginnings, 9.2, 9.3; AH writes on, 11.1, 12.3, 12.4; Bolívar returns to (1807), 12.5; liberation from Spanish rule, 12.6, 12.7, 12.8, 12.9; blockaded in Napoleonic Wars, 12.10; Spanish viceroyalties and administration, 12.11; AH defends against Buffon’s criticisms, 12.12; federation fails, 15.1; Beagle expedition visits, 17.2; Muir visits, 23.1

LeConte, Joseph, 23.1

Legions of Hell (Latin America), 12.1, 12.2

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm von

Lewis, Meriwether, 8.1, 19.1

Liebig, Justus von

Lima, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 7.1, 7.2

Lincoln, Abraham, 21.1, 21.2, 23.1

Linnaeus, Carl, 4.1, 10.1, 13.1

llaneros, 12.1, 12.2

Llanos (Latin America), 5.1, 5.2, 10.1, 12.1, 21.1

Locke, John

Loja (Ecuador)

London: AH visits, 1.1, 13.1, 14.1, 14.2, 18.1

Louis XVI, King of France: executed

Louis XVIII, King of France

Louis Philippe, King of France

Lovelock, James

Lyell, Sir Charles, 14.1, 14.2, 17.1, 18.1, 18.2, 20.1, 20.2; Principles of Geology, 14.3, 17.2, 17.3

Madison, Dolley

Madison, James, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 11.1, 12.1, 12.2, 20.1, 21.1

Magdalena, Río, 6.1, 12.1, 12.2

‘Magnetic Crusade’, 16.1, 18.1

magnetic field (earth’s); see also geomagnetism

Mahmud II, Ottoman sultan

Malthus, Thomas: Essay on the Principle of Population

Marsh, Caroline, 21.1, 21.2

Marsh, George Perkins: background and career, 21.1; as Germanophile, 21.2; reads AH, 21.3; languages, 21.4; on AH, 21.5; helps establish Smithsonian, 21.6; political career, 21.7; married life, 21.8, 21.9; appointed Minister to Turkey, 21.10; travels in Egypt and Middle East, 21.11; on comparison between Old and New Worlds, 21.12, 21.13; on damage from agriculture, 14.1, 21.14; on environmental destruction and conservation, 21.15, 21.16, 23.1, 23.2; on deforestation, 21.17, 21.18; AH’s influence on, 21.19, 21.20, 21.21; financial problems, 21.22; appointed ambassador to Italy, 21.23; and American Civil War, 21.24; vision of future of earth, 21.25; and Old World’s lessons from New, 21.26; Man and Nature, prl.1, 21.27, 21.28, 22.1, 23.3

Mauritia Palm (Mauritia flexuosa)

Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Fanny

Mérida (Venezuela)

Metternich, Prince Klemens Lothar Wenzel, 15.1, 18.1, 20.1

Mexico: AH visits, 7.1, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3; archives, 8.4; AH threatens to settle in, 14.1; requests AH’s help in negotiating trade agreement with Europe, 15.1; war with USA, 19.1, 20.1; concedes territories to USA, 19.2

Missouri Compromise (1820)

Monge, Gaspard

Mongolia

monism

monoculture

Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de

Monticello (Virginia), 8.1, 8.2

Montúfar, Carlos, 6.1, 7.1, 8.1, 8.2, 9.1, 9.2

Montúfar, Rosa

Morse, Samuel

Moscow

mosquitoes, 5.1, 5.2, 16.1

Muir, Daniel, 23.1, 23.2

Muir, Helen

Muir, John: affinity with nature, prl.1, 23.1, 23.2; reads Marsh’s Man and Nature, 21.1; appearance, 23.3; background and career, 23.4; travels, 23.5, 23.6, 23.7; thousand-mile walk to Florida, 23.8, 23.9; family moves to USA, 23.10; friendship with Jeanne Carr, 23.11, 23.12, 23.13; in Canada, 23.14; injures eyes, 23.15; in Cuba, 23.16; in California (Yosemite Valley), 23.17; on glaciers, 23.18; reads and marks AH’s books, 23.19, 23.20; on plant distribution, 23.21; Emerson visits, 23.22; campaigns for protection of nature, 23.23; writings, 23.24, 23.25; talk, 23.26; marriage, 23.27; as ranch manager, 23.28; father disapproves of writings, 23.29; accompanies Theodore Roosevelt to Yosemite, 23.30; defends Hetch Hetchy Valley, 23.31; praises AH, 23.32; visits South America, 23.33; My First Summer in the Sierra, 23.34, 23.35

Muir, Louie (née Strentzel)

Müller, Johannes

Murchison, Sir Roderick

Murray, John (publisher), 13.1, 13.2, 18.1

Mutis, José Celestino, 6.1, 14.1

Napoleon I (Bonaparte), Emperor of the French: sells North American territories to USA, 8.1; coronation and rule, 9.1, 9.2; military victories, 9.3, 11.1; disparages Friedrich Wilhelm III, 10.1; creates Confederation of the Rhine, 10.2; enters Berlin, 10.3; hostility to AH, 11.2; reads AH’s books, 11.3; defeat in Russia, 11.4; banished, 11.5, 13.1, 14.1

Napoleonic Wars, 2.1, 3.1, 6.1, 8.1, 10.1, 11.1, 12.1, 15.1

Nash, John

natural selection: theory of; see also evolution

Naturaliste (ship)

nature: AH’s understanding of as organism, prl.1, prl.2, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 10.1, 10.2, 13.1, 13.2, 15.1, 16.1; Muir’s affinity with, prl.3, 23.1, 23.2; control of, 1.1; Goethe on unity of, 2.4, 2.5; and food chain, 5.1; and freedom, 8.1; and AH’s Essay on the Geography of Plants, 10.3; Schelling on philosophy of, 10.4; AH writes on, 10.5; Bolívar’s fondness for, 12.1, 12.2, 12.3; Coleridge and Wordsworth on, 13.3; and predation, 17.1; described in Cosmos, 18.1; Thoreau’s affinity with, 19.1, 19.2, 19.3, 19.4; Marsh on human effects on, 21.1; Haeckel on unity of, 22.1; Muir on interconnectedness, 23.3, 23.4; Muir campaigns for protection of, 23.5

Naturgemälde: AH’s notion of, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 13.1, 14.1, 15.1, 19.1, 23.1

Negro, Rio, 5.1, 5.2

Neptunists, 6.1, 15.1

New York Times

Newton, Sir Isaac, prl.1, 1.1, 1.2; Opticks, 2.1

Nicholas I, Tsar of Russia, 15.1, 16.1, 16.2, 16.3

Nile, River

Obi River (Russia), 16.1, 18.1

O’Leary, General Daniel

On the Isothermal Lines and the Distribution of Heat on the Earth (AH)

Orinoco, River (South America), 4.1, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 10.1, 17.1

Oskemen (Kazakhstan)

Ottoman Empire: war with Russia (1828), 16.1, 16.2

Páez, José Antonio

Panama: AH proposes canal, 20.1, 23.1

Paraguay

Paris: Caroline in, 3.1, 3.2, 9.1, 9.2; AH visits, 3.3; AH returns to (1804), 9.3; AH’s fondness for, 9.4; changes under Napoleon, 9.5; science in, 9.6, 9.7; life in, 9.8, 11.1, 11.2; Board of Longitude, 9.9; AH meets Bolívar in, 9.10; AH settles in (1807–27), 10.1, 11.3; Prussian peace mission in (1807), 10.2; Allies occupy (1814), 11.4; tourists and visitors, 11.5; cuisine, 13.1; decline as scientific centre under monarchy, 14.1; AH leaves for Berlin (1827), 14.2; AH revisits annually from Berlin, 18.1, 18.2; World Fair (1900), 22.1; see also Académie des Sciences

Parry, William Edward

Peale, Charles Willson

Personal Narrative (AH): success and influence, 13.1; Darwin cherishes, 13.2, 17.1, 17.2, 17.3, 17.4, 20.1; inspires Wordsworth poem, 13.3; incorporated in Voyage to the Equinoctial Regions, 14.1; Thoreau reads, 19.1; new English translation, 20.2; Haeckel acquires, 22.1; on Tenerife, 22.2; Muir owns and reads, 23.1, 23.2

Peru: rebellion

Pétion, Alexandre

Philadelphia, 8.1, 8.2

Pichincha (volcano, Ecuador), 6.1, 7.1

Pico del Teide (Canary Islands), 3.1, 10.1, 17.1

Pinchot, Gifford

Piòbesi (near Turin)

Pisba (Colombia)

Pizarro (Spanish frigate), 3.1, 3.2

plants: distribution by geography and altitude, prl.1, 7.1, 10.1, 17.1, 18.1, 23.1; classification, 10.2

Poe, Edgar Allan: Eureka

Polier, Count Adolphe, 16.1, 16.2

Political Essay on the Island of Cuba (AH), 12.1, 20.1

Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain (AH), 12.1, 12.2, 13.1, 13.2, 14.1, 16.1, 17.1, 20.1

Polk, James K.

Pound, Ezra

Prussia: rise to power, 1.1; losses in Napoleonic Wars, 10.1; AH accompanies peace mission to Paris (1807), 10.2; political–economic conditions, 15.1, 15.2; revolution (1848) and demands for reform, 20.1

Pushkin, Alexander

Quarterly Review, 13.1, 18.1

Quito, 6.1, 12.1, 12.2

radiolarians, 22.1, 22.2

rainforest: life in

rationalism, 2.1, 10.1

Reform Bill (Britain, 1832), 17.1

revolutions of 1848, 20.1, 20.2

Rheinischer Merkur (newspaper)

Richards, Robert: The Tragic Sense of Life, 22.1

Riga

Riscasoli, Baron Bettino

Ritter, Carl

Rodríguez, Simón, 9.1, 9.2, 12.1

Romantic movement: in Saxe-Weimar, 2.1; Goethe and, 2.2; on internalizing nature, 2.3, 13.1; poetry, 2.4, 9.1, 13.2, 19.1; Schelling and, 10.1, 19.2; and Emerson’s Transcendentalism, 19.3

Rome, 9.1, 9.2

Roosevelt, Theodore

Rose, Gustave, 16.1, 16.2

Ross, Captain James Clark

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques

Royal Academy (London)

Royal Society (London)

Rush, Richard

Russia: AH travels in, 15.1; gold and precious minerals in, 16.1; war with Ottomans, 16.2, 16.3; absolutism under Nicholas I, 16.4; geomagnetic research in, 16.5; idolizes AH, 16.6

St Helena (island), 11.1, 13.1, 16.1, 17.1

St Petersburg, 16.1, 16.2

Saint Vincent (island): volcanic eruption (1812)

San Fernando de Apure (mission, South America), 4.1, 5.1

San Francisco

San Salvador see Bahia

Sanssouci (palace, Potsdam)

Santander, Francisco de Paula

Santiago (Cape Verde islands)

Sargen, Charles

Schelling, Friedrich: Naturphilosophie, 10.1, 13.1, 19.1

Schiller, Friedrich, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 3.1, 22.1

Schlagintweit, Hermann, Rudolph and Adolf, 20.1, 20.2

Schot, Joseph van der

science: development, 1.1; and reason and empiricism, 2.1; in Paris, 9.1, 9.2; flourishes in Napoleon’s France, 11.1; and imagination, 13.1, 18.1, 19.1; Coleridge and Wordsworth on reductionism of, 13.2; methods, 19.2

scientist (word): coined

Seifert, Johann: accompanies AH to Russia, 16.1; in Berlin with AH, 20.1; attends AH’s funeral, 20.2

self: and nature, 2.1; Kant on, 2.2; Goethe on, 2.3; Schelling on, 10.1, 13.1