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Discourse delivered hy Baron Alexander Humboldt at the 

 Extraordinary Meeting of the Imperial Academy of Sciences 

 of St Petersburg, held on the 2Sth 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 Eu- 

 rope, then agitated by wars, after long enjoying the peaceful- 

 ness of nature, and the imposing aspect of wild luxuriance, I re- 

 ceived 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 

 ^•ou conferred upon me. How far was I then from thinking 

 that I should not sit at a meeting over which you, Sir *, pre- 

 side, until I had returned /rom tlie 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 rest- 

 less and sometimes laborious life, I have been enabled to com- 

 pare 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 South- 

 ern 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 im- 

 prove the condition of society, 



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 be- 

 tween my two journeys, the physical sciences, and especially 

 geognosy, chemistry, and the electro-magnetic theory, have 



" M. OuvarofT, President of tlie f mpcvial Russian Academy of Sciences. 

 APRIL — JUNE 1830. a 



