Imperial Academy of Sciences of St Petersburg. 103 



from Livonia and Finland to the South Sea, which washes the 

 shores of eastern Asia and Russian America, on which the po- 

 sition and formation of rocks of all ages may be studied, within 

 the hmits of the same empire ; the remains of those pelagic ani- 

 mals which the ancient revolutions of our planet have buried 

 in the bowels of the earth ; the gigantic bones of land quadru- 

 peds 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 or- 

 ganized 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 observa- 

 tions, 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 in- 

 terrogating nature by means of experiment), the instruments 

 which we owe to the great age of Galileo, Huygens and Fer- 

 mat, had been known, we should now know, by comparative 

 observations, if the height of the atmosphere, the quantity of 

 water which it contains and precipitates, and the mean tempe- 

 rature 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 pressure in the equili- 

 brium of the seas, and ihe 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. 



