She must be over sixty years old.' In reality she was seventy-seven.

He spoke with admiration of Mrs.Somerville's 'Physical Geography,'-- said it was excellent because so concise.

'A German woman would have used more words.' "Humboldt asked me if they could apply photography to the small stars--to the eighth or ninth magnitude.

I had asked the same question of Professor Bond, of Cambridge, and he had replied, 'Give me $500,000, and we can do it; but it is very expensive.' "Humboldt spoke of the fifty-three small planets, and gave his opinion that they could not be grouped together; that there was no apparent connection.
"Having lost all his teeth, Humboldt's articulation was indistinct--he talked very rapidly.

His hair was thin and very white, his eyes very blue, his nose too broad and too flat; yet he was a handsome man.