279 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 
‘have already received a collection from that Society, for I 
know it was their intention to send you one. 
Professor Bunge of Dorpat is very busy describing the 
collections which the late Dr. Lehmann made during his 
journeys to Bokhara and Samarcund: there are several 
coincidences between them and the plants found by Karelin, 
Schrank and Bruner (?), but the greater number are new; 
his observations will hardly be ready for publication before 
next autumn. 
Steven is overwhelmed with administration business and 
can hardly do any thing for Natural History; he intends 
disposing of his valuable collections, botanical and entomo- 
logical, and his library too. 
Ledebours Flora is a most meritorious undertaking and . 
a difficult task ; but for the assistance of Government he : 
never could have ventured upon it. ; 
Professor Trautvetter of Kiew, who was formerly as- 
sistant at the Botanic Garden here, has begun publishing 
Icones Plantarum Flore Rossice, in conjunction with Lede- 
bour, who superintends the engraving of the plates at 
Munich. 
Turchaninoff intends leaving Siberia to settle in the 
South of Russia. 
Professor Middendorff, sent out by the Academy of Science, 
has accomplished the most hazardous journey ever under- 
taken; he started from Turnkhausk on the Yenissey, Cross- 
ing the Tundra, (you are aware the Tundra is the range of 
snowy deserts towards the Frozen Ocean, where there is no- 
growth of trees whatever), to the Timura (or Tymurah) - 
River. There, in the end of April, the thermometer of 
Fahrenheit indicated 33 degrees below zero. He fortu- 
nately reached the sea in August, but the ice prevented 
farther progress, and, in returning, he barely escaped with his 
life, his boat being shattered by the ice. By the end of 
August, the temperature was again 12 degrees below zero; 
and heavy snow-storms came on ; so that feeling too iw 3 
proceed, he was compelled to send away his companions t0 — 
