228 BiograpJiical Memoir of Peter Simon Pallas. 



garded it as sacred. It also contributed to make known M. 

 Chladni's conjectures respecting the truth of the faUing of 

 stones from the atmosphere ; a conjecture now as plainly eon- 

 firmed by the observations of a few years, as the most ancientlv - 

 announced truths could be. ^(tC^/^^ ^^ /i/^ o^,J\^iC^ fl^ *^ 



Pallas's memoir on the degeneration of animals * also presents ^"^ 

 many ideas, which, if not demonstrated, are at least original. 

 The unvarying character which horses, oxen, camels, and other 

 domestic animals, which liave few allied species, or whose hy- 

 brids are sterile, present, compared with the infinite variety of 

 races of dogs, goats and sheep, whose genera consist of numer- 

 ous species which produce with one another hybrids capable of 

 propagating, leads him to suppose that the three last species of 

 animals are in a manner factitious, being produced by the diver- 

 sified alliances of natural species. He thinks, for example, that 

 the shepherd's dog, and the wolf-dog, owe their origin to the 

 jackal, the animal which appears to him, as well as to Gulden- 

 stedt, the most closely allied to the dog, such as we now see him ; 

 the mastiff seems to him, on the contrary, to come from a mix- 

 ture with the hyena ; the small dogs with sharp muzzles, from 

 the fox. 



But the writings we have hitherto noticed are only important 

 to the naturalist : his history of the Mongol nations ought to 

 prove interesting to every man of education -|-, for it is perhaps 

 the most classical piece of composition that exists in any lan- 

 guage on the subject of the origin of nations. 



The name of Mongols might be extended to all those tribes 

 of the northern and eastern parts of Asia, whose oblique eyes, 

 yellow tint, black and lank hair, spare beard, and prominent 

 cheeks, render them so hideous in our eyes, and of which a tribe 

 devastated Europe, under Attila, in the fifth century. It be- 

 longs, however, in a more peculiar sense, to another tribe, 

 which, under Gengis Khan, in the eleventh century, laid the 

 bases of the most formidable dominion which has yet existed 

 upon the earth. China, India, Persia, and all Tartary, were 

 successively subjected by them ; they rendered Russia tribu- 



• Acta Petrop. 1780, pars ii. p. 62. 



t Collection of Historical Documents regarding the Mongol Tribes ; in 

 German, % vols. 4to, with many plates. Petersb. 1776 and 1801. 

 2 



