A CONDENSED NARRATIVE OF HIS JOURNEYS IN THE ANT INVESTIGATIONS. BY W. MACGILLIVRAY, A.M., Conservator of the Museums of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, Member of the Natural History Societies of Edinburgh and Philadelphia, &c. WITH A MAP OF THE ORINOCO, AND ENGRAVINGS. NEW-YORK: PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY J. & J. HARPER, AND SOLD BY THE BOOKSELLERS GENERALLY THROUGHOUT THE celebrity which Baron Humboldt enjoys, and which he has earned by a life of laborious investigation and perilous enterprise, renders his name familiar to every person whose attention has been drawn to political statistics or natural philosophy. In the estimation of the learned no author of the present day occupies a higher place among those who have enlarged the boundaries of human knowledge. To every one, accordingly, whose aim is the general cultivation of the mental faculties, his works are recommended by the splendid pictures of scenery which they contain, the diversified information which they afford respecting objects of universal interest, and the graceful attractions with which he has succeeded in investing the majesty of science. These considerations have induced the publishers to offer a condensed account of his Travels and Researches, such as, without excluding subjects even of laboured investigation, might yet chiefly embrace those which are best suited to the purposes of the general reader. The public taste has of late years gradually inclined towards objects of useful knowledge, works of imagination have in a great mea |