Discourse delivered by Baron Alexander Humboldt at the Extraordinary Meeting of the Imperial Academy of Sciences of St Petersburg, held on the 28th November 1829.

Gentlemen,

If, on this occasion, when there is manifested a noble ardour for honouring the labours of human intellect, I venture to crave your indulgence, I do so only in discharging a duty which you have imposed upon me.

On returning to my native country, after traversing the icy ridges of the Cordilleras, and the great forests of the equinoctial regions, and on being restored to Europe, then agitated by wars, after long enjoying the peacefulness of nature, and the imposing aspect of wild luxuriance, I received from this illustrious Academy, as a public mark of its good will, the honour of being associated with it. I still love to turn my thoughts toward the period of my life when the same eloquent voice which you have heard at the opening of this meeting, called me into the midst of you, and, by ingenious fictions, almost persuaded me that I had merited the palm which you conferred upon me.

How far was I then from thinking that I should not sit at a meeting over which you, Sir , preside, until I had returned from the banks of the Irtisch, the confines of Chinese Songarie, and the shores of the Caspian Sea!

By the fortunate concatenation of events in the course of a restless and sometimes laborious life, I have been enabled to compare the auriferous deposits of the Uralian Mountains and New Grenada--the porphyry and trachyte formations of Mexico and Altai--the savannas of the Orinoco, and the steppes of Southern Siberia, which offer a vast field to the peaceful conquests of agriculture, and to those arts which, while they add to the riches of nations, soften their manners, and progressively improve the condition of society.

M. Ouvaroff, Preaident of the Imperial Russian Academy of Sciences.

I have been enabled to carry, in part, the same instruments, or those of similar but improved construction, to the shores of the Obi and the River of Amazons.

In the long interval between my two journeys, the physical sciences, and especially geognosy, chemistry, and the electro-magnetic theory, have undergone considerable changes.

New instruments, I might almost say new organs, have been invented to bring man into more immediate contact with the mysterious powers which animate the works of creation, and of which the apparent disturbances and irregularities are subject to eternal laws.

If modern travellers can submit to their observations, in a brief period of time, a larger portion of the earth's surface, it is to the improvements effected in the mathematical and physical sciences, to the precision of our instruments, the perfection of our methods, and the art of grouping facts and rising to general considerations, that they owe the advantages which they possess.

The traveller applies to use what, through the beneficial influence of societies, and the studies of sedentary life, has been prepared in the silence of the cabinet.

To judge with equity and justice the merit of travellers of different times, we must be acquainted with the degree of development which practical astronomy, geognosy, meteorology, and descriptive natural history, had simultaneously acquired.

It is thus that the degree of culture of the great domain of the sciences must be reflected in the traveller who would raise himself to the level of his times; and, in this manner, travels undertaken for the extension of the physical knowledge of the globe, must at different ages present an individual character--the physiognomy of a given epoch.

They exhibit a picture of the state of cultivation through which the sciences have progressively passed.

In thus tracing the duties of these who have gone through the same career as myself, and whose example has often rekindled my ardour in moments of difficulty, I have pointed out the source of the feeble success of a devotion, which your generous indulgence has condescended to magnify by public testimonials of your approbation.

Finishing under happy auspices a long journey, undertaken by the order of a magnanimous monarch, powerfully aided by the knowledge of two philosophers , whose labours Europe has appreciated, MM.

Ehrenberg and Rose, I might here confine myself to laying before you the homage of my lively and respectful gratitude;--I might solicit him who, young as he still is, has ventured to penetrate into those ancient mysteries, the memorable sources of the religious and political civilization of Greece, to lend the aid of his eloquence to enable me to express more worthily the sentiments by which I am animated.

But I am aware, Gentlemen, that the charm of eloquence, were it even in accordance with the vivacity of feeling, is not sufficient in this assembly.

You have been charged in this vast empire with the grand and noble mission of giving a general impulse to the cultivation of science and literature--of encouraging the labours which are in harmony with the present state of human knowledge--of vivifying and enlarging the mind in the domain of the higher mathematics, the physical history of the globe, and the history of the nations as illustrated by the monuments of different ages.

Your view is directed forwards to the career which remains to be run, and the tribute of gratitude which I offer you--the only tribute worthy of your Institution--is the solemn engagement by which I now bind myself to remain faithful to the cultivation of the sciences to the last moment of an already advanced career, to explore nature unceasingly, and to pursue a course which has been traced by you and your illustrious predecessors.

This community of action in the higher studies, the aid which the different branches of human acquirement lend to each other, and the efforts that have been made at the same time in the two continents, and in the wide expanse of the seas, have impressed a rapid movement upon the physical sciences, as, after ages of barbarism, the simultaneousness of efforts similarly affected the progress of reason.

Happy the country whose government accords an august protection to literature and the arts, which do not merely delight the imagination of man, but also increase his intellectual power and enlarge his conceptions;--to the physical sciences and the mathematics, which have so beneficial an influence upon the development of industry and public prosperity; --to the zeal of travellers, who force their way into unknown regions, or explore the riches of their native soil, and determine by accurate measurements the nature of its configuration!

In here recalling to mind a small part of what has been done in the year now about to close, I am rendering to the Prince a heritage which, by its very simplicity, cannot be displeasing to him.

While MM.

Rose and Ehrenberg and myself have, between the Ural, the Altai, and the Caspian Sea, examined the geognostical constitution of the ground--the relations of its heights and depressions, indicated by barometrical measurements--the variations of the earth's magnetism in different latitudes (especially the augmentations of the inclination and intensity of the magnetic forces)--the temperature of the interior of the globe--the state of humidity of the atmosphere, by means of a psychrometric instrument, which had not previously been employed on a long journey--and, lastly, the astronomical position of some places, the geographical distribution of vegetables, and of several groups of the animal kingdom hitherto little known; philosophers and intrepid travellers have confronted the dangers presented by the snow-clad summits of Elborouz and Ararat.

I feel happy in seeing safely restored to the bosom of the Academy him whose valuable ideas respecting the hororary variations of the magnetic needle we have just received, and to whom the sciences are indebted (along with ingenious and delicate researches in crystallography) for the discovery of the influence of temperature upon the intensity of the electro-magnetic powers. M. Kupfer has recently returned from the Caucasian Alps, among which, after long migrations of the human race, in the great shipwreck of nations and tongues, so many different tribes have found refuge.

To the name of this traveller, our learned associate, is joined, by similarity of labours, the name of the philosopher who, with a noble perseverance, has struggled on the ridges of Ararat, regarded as the classic soil of the earliest and most venerable recollections of history, with the obstacles which the depth and softness of the eternal snows presented to him.

I am almost afraid of wounding the modesty of the father, by adding, that M. Parrot, the traveller of Ararat, worthily sustains in the sciences the lustre of a hereditary celebrity.

In the more eastern regions of the empire, which have received illustration from the immortal labours of my countryman Pallas, (pardon me, Gentlemen, if I claim for Prussia part of the glory of which two nations at once may be proud), in the Uralian and Kolyvan mountains, we have followed the still recent traces of the scientific expeditions of MM.

Ledebour, Meyer and Bunge, and of MM. Hoffmann and Helmersen.

The beautiful Flora of the Altai has already enriched the botanical establishment with which this capital is honoured, and which has risen, as by enchantment, thanks to the indefatigable and enlightened zeal of its director, to the rank of the first botanical gardens of Europe.

The scientific world waits with impatience the publication of the Flora of the Altai, of which Dr Bunge himself, in the neighbourhood of Zmeinogorsk, shewed my friend M. Ehrenberg some interesting productions.

It was unquestionably the first time that a traveller from Abyssinia, Dongola, Sinai and Palestine, ascended the mountains of Riddersky, covered with perpetual snows.

The geognostical description of the southern part of the Ural has been confided to two young naturalists, MM. Hoffmann and Helmerssen, one of whom was the first who gave an accurate account of the volcanoes of the South Sea.

This choice is due to an enlightened minister, a friend of science and its cultivators, the Count Cancrin, whose kind attention, activity and foresight, have impressed my fellow-labourers and myself with a gratitude not to be effaced. MM. Helmerssen and Hoffmann, pupils of the celebrated school of Dorpat, have studied for two years with success the different ramifications of the Ural Mountains, from the great Taganai, and the granites of Iremel, to beyond the plain of Gouberlinsk, which is connected, more to the south, with the Mougodjares Monntains, and to the east between Lake Aral and the basin of the Caspian Sea.

It was there that M. Lemm, in spite of the severity of the winter, made the first accurate astronomical observations that have been obtained of this arid yet inhabited country.

We had the great satisfaction of being accompanied for a month by MM. Hoffmann and Helmerssen, and it was by them that we were first shewn a formation of volcanic amygdaloids, near Grasnuschinskaia, the only ones that have as yet been discovered in the long chain of the Ural which separates Europe and Asia, which presents the most abundant eruptions of metals on its eastern slope, and which contains, in veins or in alluvium, gold, platina, osmiuret of iridium, diamonds, discovered by Count Polier in alluvia to the west of the lofty mountain of Catschcaner, zircon, sapphire, amethyst, ruby, topaz, beryl, garnet, anatase, found by M. Rose, the celylanite, and other valuable productions of India and Brasil.

I might extend the list of important labours performed in the present year of his Majesty's reign, by speaking of the trigonemetrical observations of the west, which, by the union of the labours of Generals Schubert and Tenner, and of M. Struve, the great astronomer of Dorpat, will elucidate the figure of the Earth on a great scale;--of the geological constitution of Lake Raikal, which has been examined by M. Hess;--of the magnetic expedition of MM.

Hansteen, Erman and Dowe, justly celebrated over all Europe, the most extensive and adventurous that has ever been undertaken by land (from Berlin and Christiania to Kamtchatka, where it connects itself with the great labours of Captains Wrangell and Anjou);--lastly, of the circumnavigation of the globe, which, by the command of the Sovereign, Captain Luethe has performed, and which, through the co-operation of three excellent naturalists, Dr Mertens, Baron Kittliz, and M. Postels, has been productive of important results in Astronomy, Physica, Botany and Anatomy.

I have undertaken to point out this community of efforts by which several portions of the empire have been explored, by the aid of modern science, by that of new instruments, and new methods, founded upon the analogy of facts formerly unknown.

It is also by a community of interests that, having once more ventured upon a new journey, I have found pleasure in adorning my discourse with names which have become dear to science.

After having admired the richness of the mineral productions, the wonders of physical nature, one loves to point out (and it is a pleasant duty to perform in a strange land, in the midst of the assembly which listens to me) the intellectual richness of a nation, the labours of those useful men, disinterested in their devotion to science, who traverse their country, or, in solitude, prepare by study, by calculation and experiment, the discoveries of future generations.

If, as we have proved by recent examples, the vast extent of the Russian Empire, which surpasses that of the visible part of the moon, requires the concurrence of numerous observers, this very extent also presents advantages of another kind, which have long been known to you, Gentlemen, but which, in their relation to the present state of our knowledge of the physical history of the earth, do not appear to me to have been sufficiently appreciated; I would not speak of that immense scale, from Livonia and Finland to the South Sea, which washes the shores of eastern Asia and Russian America, on which the position and formation of rocks of all ages may be studied, within the limits of the same empire; the remains of those pelagic animals which the ancient revolutions of our planet have buried im the bowels of the earth; the gigantic bones of land quadrupeds now lost, or whose kindred species live only in the tropical regions;--I would not draw the attention of this assembly to the aids which the geography of plants and animals (a science only commencing its existence) will one day derive from a more profound specific knowledge of the climatic distribution of organized beings, from the happy regions of the Chersonesus and Mingrelia, from the frontiers of Persia and Asia Minor, to the melancholy shores of the Frozen Ocean;--I prefer confining myself to those variable phenomena whose regular periodicity, determined with the rigorous precision of astronomical observations, would lead directly to the discovery of the great laws of nature.

If, in the school of Alexandria, and at the splendid epoch of the Arabians (the first masters in the art of observing and interrogating nature by means of experiment), the instruments which we owe to the great age of Galileo, Huygens and Fermat, had been known, we should now know, by comparative observations, if the height of the atmosphere, the qualitity of water which it contains and precipitates, and the mean temperature of places, have diminished in the course of ages; we should know the secular changes of the electro-magnetic charge of our planet, and the modifications which the temperature of the different strata of the globe, increasing in the ratio of the depth, may have undergone, whether through an augmentation of radiation, or from internal volcanic motions; lastly we should know the variations of the level of the ocean, the partial disturbances caused by the barometrical preasure in the equilibrium of the seas, and the relative frequency of certain winds, depending upon the form and surfaces of the continents. M.

Ostrogradsky would submit to his profound calculations these data, that had accumulated through ages, as he has recently solved with success one of the most difficult problems of the propagation of vibrations.

Unfortunately, in the physical sciences, the civilisation of Europe did not commence at so early a period.

We are, as the priests of Sais said of the Hellenes, a new people.

The almost simultaneous invention of those organs by which we are brought into contact with the external world,--the telescope, the thermometer, the barometer, the pendulum, and that other instrument, the most general and the most powerful of all, the infinitesimal calculus,--hardly dates thirty lustrums back.

In this conflict of the powers of nature, which yet does not destroy her stability, the periodical variations do not seem to surpass oertain limits; they make the entire system oscillate round a mean state of equilibrium,--at least such is the case in the present state of things, since the great cataclysms which swallowed up so many generations of animals and plants.

Now the value of the periodical change is determined with so much the more precision, the greater the interval between the extreme observations.

It is the duty of the scientific bodies which are continually forming and renovating themselves,--the academies, the universities, the many learned societies scattered over Europe, in the two Americas, at the southern extremity of Africa, in India, and even in New Holland, which, although but of late so wild, already possesses an observatory,--to observe, to measure, and, as it were, to watch over, what is variable in the economy of nature.

The illustrious author of the Mecanique Celeste, has often verbally expressed the same thought in the midst of the Institute, where I have had the honour of sitting with him for eighteen years.

The western nations have carried into the different parts of the world those forms of civilization, that development of the human intellect, whose origin ascends to the epoch of the intellectual greatness of the Greeks, and to the gentle influence of Christianity.

Divided in languages and manners, and in political and religious institutions, the enlightened nations form in our days but a single family (and this is one of the most beautiful results of modern civilization), when the object in view is the great interests of science, literature, and art, all that, springing from an internal source, the depths of thought and feeling, elevates man above the vulgar cares of society.

In this noble community of interests and action, most of the important problems which have reference to the physics of the globe, and which I have pointed out above, may, without doubt, become the object of simultaneous researches; but the immense extent of the Russian Empire in Europe, Asia, and America, presents peculiar and local advantages, well worthy of occupying, for one day, the thoughts of this illustrious society.

An impulse given from so high a source would produce a happy activity among the observers with which your country is honoured.

I would venture to point out here, and to recommend to your notice, three objects which are not (as was once said under a misapprehension of the concatenation of human acquirements) merely speculative and theoretical, but which have intimate reference to the ordinary wants of life.

The nautical art, the teaching of which, encouraged by the highest patronage, has, under the direction of a great navigator , assumed so happy a development in this country, has, for centuries back, required a precise knowledge of the variations of the earth's magnetism in declination, inclination, and intensity of forces, for the declination of the needle in different seas, the appreciation of which is more exclusively required by mariners, is intimately connected in theory with two other elements, the inclination and the intensity measured by oscillations.

At no former period did the knowledge of the variations of the terrestrial magnetism make so rapid advances as within the last thirty years.

The angles which the needle forms with the vertical and the meridian of the place,--the intensity of forces, of which I have had the good fortune to ascertain the increase from the equator to the magnetic pole,--the horary variations of inclination, declination, and intensity, often modified by the aurora borealis, earthquakes, and mysterious motions in the interior of the earth, --the irregular disturbances of the needle, which I have designated, in a long course of observations, by the name of magnetic tempests,--have, in their turn, become objects of the most laborious researches.

The great discoveries of Oerstedt, Arago, Ampere, Seebeck, Morichini, and Mrs Somerville, have revealed to us the mutual relations of magnetism with electricity, heat and solar light.

There are only three metals, Iron, Nickel, and Cobalt, that become magnetic.

The surprising phenomenon of rotatory magnetism, which my illustrious friend M.

Arago first made known, shews us that nearly all the bodies in nature are transitorily susceptible of electro-magnetic actions.

The Russian empire is the only country on earth traversed by two lines without declination, or along which the needle is directed towards the poles of the earth.

One of these two lines, whose position and periodical motion of translation from east to west, are the principal elements of a future theory of the terrestrial magnetism, passes, according to the last researches of MM.

Hansteen and Erman, between Mourom and Nijni-Novogorod; the second, some degrees to the east of Irkoutsk between Parchnikaia and Jarbinsk.

Their prolongation northwards, and the rapidity of their motion westward, are not yet known.

The physics of the globe require the complete tracing of the two lines without declination, at equi-distant periods, for example, every ten years,-- the precise determination of the absolute variations of inclination and intensity at all the points where MM.

Hansteen, Erman, and myself, have observed in Europe, between St Petersburg, Cazan and Astracan, in Northern Asia between Jekaterinburg, Miask, Oust-Kamenogorsk, Obdorsk, and Jakoutsk.

These results cannot be obtained by strangers who traverse the country in a single direction, and at a single period.

There is required a system of combined observations, carried on during a long period of time, and confided to observere established in the different countries.

St Petersburg, Moscow, and Cazan, are fortunately situated very near the first line of no declination, which traverses European Russia.

Kiachta and Verkhne-Oudinsk present advantages for the second or Siberian line.

When we reflect on the comparative precision of observations made at sea and on land, with the aid of the instruments of Borda, Bessel, and Gambey, we may easily be persuaded that Russia, by its position, is capable of forwarding the theory of magnetism in a very great degree, in the space of twenty years.

In speaking of these matters, I am only, gentlemen, in a manner, the interpreter of your desires.

The manner in which you received the request which I addressed to you, seven months ago, relative to the correspondent observations of horary variations made at Paris, at Berlin, in a mine at Freyberg, and at Cazan, by the learned and laborious astronomer M. Simonoff, has proved that the Imperial Academy will worthily second the other academies of Europe in the thorny, but useful, research into the periodicity of all the magnetic phenomena.

Admiral Krusenstern.

If the resolution of the problem which I have just pointed out, is equally important for the physical history of our planet and the improvement of the art of navigation, the second object which I have to lay before you, and for which the extent of the empire presents immense advantages, is more immediately connected with general wants,--the cultivation of the soil, the examination of the configuration of the ground, the exact knowledge of the humidity of the air, which visibly decreases with the destruction of the forests and the diminution of the water of lakes and rivers.

The first and noblest object of science resides undoubtedly in themselves, in the enlargement of the sphere of ideas, and of the intellectual power of man.

It is not in the bosom of an academy like yours, under the monarch who regulates the destinies of the empire, that the research of great physical truths requies the support of a material and external interest, of an immediate application to the wants of social life: but when the sciences, without deviating from their noble primary object, are capable of exercising a direct influence upon agriculture and the arts (which are too exclusively called useful), it is the duty of the philosopher to point out these relations between the scientific investigation of countries, and the increase of territorial riches.

A country which extends over more than 135 degrees of longitude, from the happy zone of the olive to the climates in which the ground is only covered with lichens, is more than any other capable of advancing the study of the atmosphere, the knowledge of the mean temperatures of the year, and, what is much more important for the cycle of vegetation, that of the distribution of the annual heat among the different seasons.

Add to these data for obtaining a group of facts intimately connected with each other, the variable pressure of the air, and the relation of this pressure to the predominant winds and the temperature, the extent of the horary variations of the barometer (which under the tropics, transform a tube filled with mercury into a kind of time-piece of most imperturbable regularity in its progress), the hygrometric state of the air, and the annual quantity of rain, which it is of so much importance to the agriculturist to know.

When the varied inflections of the isothermal lines, or lines of equal heat, shall be traced by accurate observations, and continued at least five years, in European Russia and Siberia; when they shall have been prolonged to the western coasts of America, where an excellent navigator Captain Wrangel, is soon to reside,--the science of the distribution of heat at the surface of the globe, and in the strata accessible to our researches, will be established upon solid foundations.

The government of the United States of North America, keenly interested in the progress of population, and of an extensive cultivation of useful plants, has long been sensible of the advantages afforded by the great extent of its possessions from the Atlantic to the Rocky Mountains, from Louisiana and Florida, where the sugar-cane is cultivated, to the Canadian lakes.

Meteorological instruments, after being compared with each other, have been distributed over a great number of places, the selection of which has been submitted to minute discussion, and the annual results, reduced to a small number of figures, are published by a central committee, which watches over the uniformity of the observations and calculations.

I have already pointed out in a memoir, in which I have discussed the general causes upon which the differences of climate in the same latitude depend, on how great a scale this beautiful example of the United States might be followed in the Russian Empire.

This beautiful memoir was published in vol. iv.

of the New Series of this Journal.

We are happily far removed from the period when philosophers thought they knew the calimate of a place, when they knew the extremes of temperature attained by the thermometer in winter and summer.

A uniform method, founded upon the choice of hours, and up to the level of our recently acquired knowledge of the true means of the days, months, and whole year, will replace the old and defective methods.

By this investigation, various prejudices respecting the selection of objects of cultivation, the possibility of planting the vine, the mulberry, the chesnut, or the oak, will disappear in certain provinces of the empire.

To extend it to the most remote parts, we may reckon upon the enlightened co-operation of many well-educated young officers, with whom the Corps des Mines is honoured, that of physicians animated by zeal for the physical sciences, and upon the pupils of that excellent institution, the School of Canals, Bridges, and Roads, in which mathematical studies of a high order give rise to a kind of instinctive taste for order and precision.

Along with the two objects of research which we have just examined in their relation to the extent of the empire (the earth's magnetism and the study of the atmosphere, which leads at the same time, by the aid of the mean heights of the barometer, to the improved knowledge of the configuration of the ground), I would mention, in concluding, a third kind of inquiry of a more local interest, although connected with the great questions of physical geography.

A considerable part of the earth's surface around the Caspian Sea, is inferior to the level of the Black Sea and the Baltic.

This depression, which had been supposed for more than a century, and which has been measured by the laborious efforts of MM. Parrot and Engelhardt, may be ranked among the most surprising geognostical phenomena.

The exact determination of the mean annual barometric height of the city of Orenburg, which we owe to MM. Hoffmann and Helmerssen; a levelling (nivellement par station?) made by the aid of the barometer, by the same observers, from Orenburg to Gourief, the eastern port of the Caspian Sea; corresponding measures taken during several months in these two places; and, lastly, observations recently made by us at Astracan and at the mouth of the Volga, corresponding at once to Sarepta, Orenburg, Cazan, and Moscow, will serve, when all the data are brought together and rigorously calculated, to verify the absolute height of this internal basin.

On the northern side of the Caspian Sea, every thing appears to indicate at the present day a progressive diminution of the level of the waters; but without giving too much credit to the report of Hanway (an old English traveller, of otherwise respectable character), about the periodical risings and fallings, we cannot deny the encroachments of the Caspian Sea near the ancient city of Terek (perhaps the old town of Terek or Old Terek) and to the south of the mouth of the Cyrus, where scattered trunks of trees, the remains of a forest, are seen always inundated.

The islet of Pogorelaia Plita, on the contrary, seems to be progressively extending and rising above the waves, which, not many years ago covered it, previous to the flames which were perceived by navigators at a distance.

To solve in a satisfactory manner the great problems relative to the depression, which is perhaps variable, of the level of the waters, and of that of the continental basin of the Caspian Sea, it were desirable that there should be traced a soundings line around this basin, in the plains of Sarepta, Ouralsk, and Orenburg, by uniting the points which are precisely at the level of the Baltic and Black Seas; that it should be determined by marks placed on the coasts all round the Caspian Sea (like the marks placed nearly a century ago on the coasts of Sweden, by the directions of the Stockholm Academy), whether there be a general or partial, a continuous or periodical, fall of the waters, or whether (as the great geologist M. Leopold de Buch supposes in respect to Scandinavia) a part of the neighbouring land is elevated or depressed by volcanic causes acting at immense depths in the interior of the globe.

The mountainous isthmus of Caucasus, partly composed of trachyte and other rocks, which undoubtedly owe their origin to volcanic fires, margins the Caspian Sea to the west, while it is surrounded to the east by tertiary and secondary formations, which extend towards those countries of ancient celebrity, for the knowledge of which Europe is indebted to the important work of Baron Meyendorf.

In these general views, which I submit to your enlightened consideration, I have attempted to point out some of the advantages which the physical history of the globe might derive from the position and extent of this empire.

I have exposed the views which vividly presented themselves to me, in sight of the regions from which I have just returned.

It has appeared to me more suitable to render a public testimony of approbation to those who, under the auspices of the government, have pursued the same career as myself, and to direct the attention to what remains to be done for the advancement of science, and for the glory of your country, than to speak of my own efforts, and compress within a narrow compass the results of observations which have still to be compared with the great mass of partial data which you have collected.

I have alluded in this discourse to the extent of country which separates the line of no magnetic variation, to the east of Lake Baikal from the basin of the Caspian Sea, the valleys of the Cyrus, and the frozen summits of Caneasus.

At these names the mind involuntarily reverts to that recent struggle, in which the moderation of the conqueror has increased the glory of his arms, which has opened up new paths to commerce, and has ensured the deliverance of Greece, the long abandoned cradle of the civilization of our ancestors.

But it is not in this peaceful assembly that I ought to celebrate the glory of arms.

The august monarch, who has deigned to call me to this country, and to smile upon my labours, presents himself to my imagination as a peace-making genius.

Vivifying by his example all that is true, great, and generous, he has delighted, since the dawn of his reign, in protecting the study of the sciences which nourish and strengthen the understanding, and that of literature and the arts, which embellish life, and add to the comfort of society.