1846-47-] FJJtSr LECTURE AT BOSTON. 289 



of the most difficult and complicated questions of natural 

 history, but he was so full of his subject that he trusted 

 to his power to enrapture his very large audience of fif- 

 teen hundred persons of both sexes and of all ages. 

 Sometimes words were not at his command, and he 

 would pause and wait patiently, with his peculiar smile 

 and beaming eyes, so characteristic of the man, in the 

 meantime amusing his audience by drawing on the 

 blackboard excellent outlines of animals. His French 

 accent was considered a new charm added to his other 

 personal accomplishments ; and he stepped down from 

 the platform in a burst of applause, which plainly 

 showed that he had succeeded in his rather hazardous 

 undertaking. 



Until then he had never seen a scientific lecture 

 delivered before so many people. The largest audi- 

 ences he had seen were in Paris at the lecture-rooms 

 of the College de France and the Jardin des Plantes, 

 when George Cuvier was the lecturer, and at the Astro- 

 nomical Observatory, when Frangois Arago was explain- 

 ing the " Systeme du Monde ' before such listeners as 

 Alexander von Humboldt, Biot, Leverier, and a whole 

 crowd of members of the French Institute. In those 

 days three or four hundred persons at most crowded 

 the Paris lecture-rooms, but the fifteen hundred auditors 

 of the Lowell Institute room surpassed everything he 

 had ever thought of. Making a large allowance for 

 the curiosity which attracted many persons, there re- 

 mained enough to satisfy, and even more than satisfy, 

 his most sanguine expectations. For the first time he 

 understood that very characteristic feature of American 

 u 



