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STATE OF ZOOLOGY 
SWITZERLAND. 
An humble cottage in Switzerland was the cradle of Scientific 
Congresses, wliich Italy now beholds in gilded marble saloons, 
thanks to the love of science which certain of her princes ex- 
hibit, on these occasions especially, as an example to others. 
It was there that these Congresses Avere founded by the worthy 
Gosse, whose accomplished son honours this meeting with his 
presence, and from them the celebrated Oken originated those 
of Germany, from which, rather than from the later Associa- 
tions of France and Britain, you are well aware that our 
Congresses are modelled. The annual recurrence of these 
meetings in the Swiss Republic, proves abundantly, that no 
other country of the world includes so many men of science in 
so small an area. Another proof of it is to be found in the 
various collections of Academical Memoirs, among which the 
most distinguished in the present year are, the Transactions 
of the Helvetic Society, and the Memoires de la Societe des 
Sciences Naturelles de Neufchatel. Neufchatel is a corner of 
the world, illuminated by the presence of an Agassiz ; of that 
Agassiz, who, in the morning of his life, launched into such 
reputation, that the Academies of Rome, of Paris, of London, 
of Petersburgh, of America, strove to enrol him among their 
members. He continues with success his great work on Fossil 
Fish, and has at last issued the first specimens of that other 
magnificent work on the Fresh-water Fish of Central Europe, 
the plates of which, illuminated in water colours, and silvered 
in a manner entirely new, surpass in truth and splendour every 
other work of a similar description. It was fortunate for him, 
that the British Congress preceded that of Turin (to which, as 
you are aware, he communicated a most important letter re- 
specting Italian fossils), as he was well repaid with interesting 
observations made in richer regions, and in the fame which he 
earned, by proving that all the surface of the British Islands 
had once been covered with perpetual ice ; although his fa- 
tiguing exertions and the rigour of the climate injured his 
health, so that being unfitted for profound study, and having 
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