emy is three
hundred and twenty-nine, of whom one hundred and five were admitted at
the last examination, in February. The number for whom the building is
designed is about six hundred.

Authors and Books.

A book which we cannot too highly recommend is the _Briefe ueber
Humboldt's Kosmos_ (Letters on Humboldt's Cosmos), published at Leipzic,
in two octavo volumes, from the pens of Professor COTTA and Professor
SCHALLER. It is intended to serve as a commentary upon that work, which
it is well worthy to accompany. Without attempting an exhaustive
treatise on the details of the various topics touched on by Humboldt,
the writers have expanded some of the leading points of his work into
scientific essays, whose practical utility is none the smaller for an
elegant and attractive style, and a genial enthusiasm, of which Humboldt
need not be ashamed. The first volume, by Professor Cotta, contains
forty letters on the following themes: The enjoyment of nature; matter
and forces, growth and existence; natural philosophy; the fixed stars,
their parallaxes, groups, movements, nebulae; double stars, structure of
the universe, resisting medium; the solar system; the laws of motion,
Kepler and Newton; density of the heavenly bodies; our moon, its orbit,
no atmosphere, no water; comets; meteors, and meteoric stones; form of
the earth; magnetism; volcanic activity; gas-springs; geysers; internal
structure of the earth; history of organisms, their first origin, and
developments; the surface, its forms, and their influence on animated
life; the gradual rising and sinking of the surface in Sweden; the
tides; circulation of water on the earth--springs, cold, warm, mineral,
artesian--rivers, seas, ocean currents, evaporation and condensation;
glaciers; the atmosphere, climate, weather, winds, storm-clouds; organic
life on the earth, its nature, differences, origin of the differences,
original production, creation, first appearance; man, his origin, races,
forms, phrenology, &c. These letters offer, as we have already said, in
a pleasing and attractive form, a condensed and comprehensive view of
what is now known with reference to the sciences treated. The letter
upon Man is especially interesting. Professor Cotta belongs to those who
think the human race to be "the gradual perfection, through thousands of
generations," of a lower order of creatures. "The human individual," he
says, "even now, in the embryonic state, passes through