226 Biographical Memoir of Peter Simon Pallas, 



smallest change in the administration stops the most important 

 publications, when they have no immediate connection with the 

 interests of the government at the time. Pallas afterwards gave 

 to the world a part of his botanical discoveries in works that 

 were less magnificent, but which he was able to publish without 

 foreign aid. 



Of these his history of the Astragali was the first *. He 

 then gave a history of the Halophytes, or those maritime plants 

 of the family of the Salicorniag, so abundant in the steppes, or 

 plains of sand impregnated with salt, which cover the southern 

 parts of Russia -f*. The Absinthiae and Artemisia? which are 

 not less abundant on these steppes, and which had already 

 been remarked there by the "ancients, were to form a sequel to 

 the Halophytes ; but the misfortunes occasioned by the war in 

 Germany stopped it at the 59th plate. 



The interruption of his great Flora of Russia did not pre- 

 vent him from undertaking a work, equally general, on the ani- 

 mals of that empire, a country which produces almost all those 

 of Europe, the greater part of those of Asia, and which, more- 

 over, possesses a great number peculiar to itself. A volume of 

 this work was printed in Petersburg, but it has not been pub- 

 lished |. Pallas laboured at it until his last moments, and has 

 lefl the whole manuscript relating to the vertebrate animals. M. 

 Rudolphi, who knew him, asserts^ and it will easily be believed, 

 that it contains several new species, and many interesting ob- 

 servations. 



He had commenced a distinct work on the Insects of Russia, 

 of which only two numbers have appeared §. 



It is seldom that men so laborious, occupied with conducting 

 at once so many undertakings, have their j udgment sufficiently 

 exercised to conceive those fundamental ideas which are calcula- 

 ted to produce revolutions in science ; but Pallas forms an excep- 

 tion to this rule. We have seen how near he was to effecting a 



• Species Astragalorum Descriptae et Iconibus coloratis instructse. FoL 

 Leips. 1800. 



+ Illustrationes Plantarum imperfecte vel nondum cognitarum. Fol. 

 Leips. 1803. 



X Fauna Asiatica-Bossiea, Petrop. 1811 and 1812. 



§ Icones Insectorum praesertim Russiae Sibiriseque peculiarium ; Erlang, 

 1781 and 1782. 4to. 



