recently carried on in the Russian Empire. 289 



ceasingly, and to follow in the route which you and your illus- 

 trious predecessors have traced. 



This community of action in the higher studies, — the recipro- 

 cal aid which the different branches of human knowledge derive 

 from each other, — the efforts made simultaneously in the two 

 continents, and in the vast extent of the ocean, have given a 

 rapid impulse to the physical sciences, in the same manner, as af- 

 ter the barbarous ages, simultaneous effbrts gave an impulse to the 

 progress of reason. Happy is the country whose government 

 yields a noble protection to letters and the fine arts, which not 

 only delight the imagination of man, hut augment also his in- 

 tellectual power, and give energy to his noblest thoughts ; — 

 to the physical and mathematical sciences which have such a 

 happy irifluence on tht progress of industry and public prospe- 

 rity ; — to the zeal of travellers, who, forced to penetrate into 

 imknown regions, or to examine the riches of the soil, or to ob- 

 tain a correct^ knowledge of its surface. To recount at first a 

 small part of what has been done in the year which is about to 

 close, is to render to the Sovereign a tribute which, by its very 

 simplicity, must be agreeable to him. 



While in the Oural, the Altai, and the Caspian Sea, the 

 effbrts of MM. Rose, Ehrenberg, and myself, were directed to 

 the geognostic constitution of the soil, the relations between its 

 elevations and depressions indicated by the barometer ; the va- 

 riations of terrestrial magnetism in different latitudes (particu- 

 larly the increase of the inclination, and of the intensity of the 

 magnetic forces ;) the interior temperature of the globe ; the 

 state of humidity of the atmosphere by means of a psychrome- 

 trical instrument which had never before been employed in a 

 distant voyage ; the astronomical position of places ; the geo- 

 graphical distribution of vegetables, and of several groupes of 

 the animal kingdom hitherto little studied — of the philosophers 

 and intrepid travellers who smiled at the dangers of the snowy 

 summits of Elborouz and Ararat. 



I congratulate myself in seeing safely returned into the bosom 

 of the Academy, him from whom we have derived the most 

 valuable notions on the horary variations of the magnetic 

 needle, and to whom the sciences owe (independent of his inge- 

 nious and delicate researches on crystallography,) the discovery 



I. 



