Sublime

De Lesseps’s grandiosity, or capacity for self-delusion, made him, like Eugène Bontoux, an exceptionally effective promoter.

John Muir (“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe”),

Royal Geographical Society 1865 – named after the Surveyor General of India, Sir George Everest. To his credit he objected – said it couldn’t be written or pronounced in Hindi.

higher-latitude temperate regions were no longer separated from the tropics by deserts.

Etwas, das nicht die Trennung zwischen der tierischen und der humanen Sphäre in unserer eigenen Natur zementiert, sondern das die Wege nachzeichnet, auf denen sich Humanität überhaupt erst aus den Bedürfnissen des Organischen entwickelt.

I saw more of Lyell than of any other man, both before and after my marriage. His mind was characterised, as it appeared to me, by clearness, caution, sound judgment, and a good deal of originality. When I made any remark to him on Geology, he never rested until he saw the whole case clearly, and often made me see it more clearly than I had done be

Agassiz’s son, Alexander, who was trained by his father and served as his principal museum assistant, became a leading zoologist, a pioneer in oceanography, and made a fortune in copper mining, much of which he ultimately devoted to the museum and other work begun by his father. Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, in less than a decade after her husband’s deat