land, have hastened to our meeting from Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Holland, England, and Poland, point out the way to other strangers in succeeding years, so that by turns every part of Germany may enjoy the effects of scientific communication with the different nations of Europe.
But although I must restrain the expression of my personal feelings in presence of this assembly, I must be permitted at least to name the patriarchs of our national glory, who are detained from us by a regard for those lives so dear to their country;—Goethe, whom the great creations of poetical fancy have not prevented from penetrating the arcana of nature, and who now in rural solitude mourns for his princely friend, as Germany for one of her greatest ornaments;—Olbers, who has discovered two bodies where he had already predicted they were to be found;—the greatest anatomists of our age—Soemmering, who, with equal zeal, has investigated the wonders of organic structure, and the spots and faculæ of the sun, (condensations and openings of the photosphere;) Blumenbach, whose pupil I have the honour to be, who, by his works and his immortal eloquence, has inspired everywhere a love of comparative anatomy, physiology, and the general history of nature, and who has laboured diligently for half a century. How could I resist the temptation to adorn my discourse with names which posterity will repeat, as we are not favoured with their presence?
These observations on the literary wealth of our native country, and the progressive developement of our institution, lead us naturally to the obstructions which will arise from the increasing number of our fellow-labourers. The chief object of this assembly does not consist, as in other societies whose sphere is more limited, in the mutual interchange of treatises, or in innumerable memoirs, destined to be printed in some general collection. The principal object of this Society is, to bring those personally together who are engaged in the same field of science. It is the immediate, and therefore more obvious interchange of ideas, whether they