Albany is the seat of government of the State of New York. It has a medical school, an agricultural society, a geological museum, an anatomical museum, and a museum of natural history. The government has just completed the publication of a work, unique of its kind, a natural history of the State in sixteen volumes, quarto, with plates; twenty-five hundred copies have been printed, only five hundred of which are for sale, the rest being distributed throughout the State. Four volumes are devoted to geology and mining alone, the others to zoology, botany, and agriculture. Yes, twenty-five hundred copies of a work in sixteen volumes, quarto, scattered throughout the State of New York alone! When I think that I began my studies in natural history by copying hundreds of pages from a Lamarck which some one had lent me, and that to-day there is a State in which the smallest farmer may have access to a costly work, worth a library to him in itself, I bless the efforts of those who devote themselves to public instruction. . .I have not neglected the opportunity offered by the North River (the Hudson) for the study of the fresh-water fishes of this country. I have filled a barrel with them. The species differ greatly from ours, with the exception of the perch, the eel, the pike, and the sucker, in which only a practiced eye could detect the difference; all the rest belong to genera unknown in Europe, or, at least, in Switzerland. . . I was fortunate enough to procure also, in the few days of my stay, all the species taken in the lakes and rivers around Albany. Several others have been given me from Lake Superior. Since my return to Boston I have been collecting birds and comparing them with those of Europe. If M. Coulon could obtain for me a collection of European eggs, even the most common, I could exchange them for an admirable series of the native species here. I have also procured several interesting mammals; among others, two species of hares different from those I brought from Halifax, striped squirrels, etc. I will tell you another time something of the collections of Boston and Cambridge, the only ones in the United States which can rival those of Philadelphia. To-day I have made my first attempt at lecturing. Of that, also, I will tell you more in my next letter, when I know how it has been liked. It is no small matter to satisfy an audience of three thousand people in a language with which you are but little familiar. . . CHAPTER 14. 1846-1847: AGE 39-40. Course of Lectures in Boston on Glaciers. Correspondence with Scientific Friends in Europe. House in East Boston. Household and Housekeeping. Illness. Letter to Elie de Beaumont. Letter to James D. Dana.