KESIDENCE AT BERLIN TO THE EEVOLUTION OF JULY. 113 



ing notices of the lectures to be delivered, where parts have 

 been cut out and pasted over with additions of a later date 

 evidently in preparation for publication ; these papers, in- 

 complete as they are, afford a guide by which the course of the 

 lectures may be followed, and are in themselves evidence that 

 at least the first and second volumes of ' Cosmos ' were based 

 upon them, both in point of subject and order of arrangement. 

 Members of the Academy of Sciences at Berlin are entitled, 

 in virtue of this distinction, to lecture before the University. 

 Humboldt, therefore, was only availing himself of the custo- 

 mary privilege when he announced a course of public lectures 

 upon physical geography, to be delivered during the, winter 

 session of 1827-28. In his introductory remarks he alluded 

 to the ' difficulty ' he experienced to avoid clashing with Link, 

 who had recently lectured upon the same subject, and ap- 

 pealed to the indulgence of his audience &om the disad- 

 vantages under which he laboured in the loss of familiarity 

 with his native tongue, owing to his long expatriation, and 

 in the novelty of his position in occupying the lecturer's 

 chair, since the lectures he delivered in Paris were of so 

 different a character as hardly to deserve the name. Between 

 November 3," 1827, and April 26, 1828, he delivered sixty- 

 one lectures before the University ; at first he lectured twice 

 in the week, but from the end of March, with the exception 

 of a short pause at Easter, he gave a lecture nearly every 

 day. In addressing his audience he used no other notes than 

 the outlines already alluded to, which, from the fulness of 

 detail demanded by the subject, were manifestly necessary. 

 After a short preliminary definition of the province of physical 

 geography, he gave in the first four lectures l a general descrip- 

 tion of nature, afterwards incorporated in a more extended 

 and elaborate form in the first volume of ' Cosmos.' He next 

 proceeded to astronomy, whence he passed to the consideration 

 of the planetary condition of the earth, and, after giving 

 the principal outlines of geology and meteorology, dwelt 

 upon the geographical distribution of plants and animals, and 

 the spread of the human race. The importance he attached to 



1 The deviation from this order in the Preface to ' Kosmos,' TO!, i. p. xi, 

 is substantiated by the manuscript notes. 

 VOL. II. I 



