224 Biographical Memoir of Peter Simon Pallas^ 



he becomes a poet in spite of himself. At Kamtschatka, is it not 

 enough that one have barely the power to write ? 



Pallas, young and vigorous as he was, returned enfeebled by 

 the sufferings consequent on so painful a journey. At the age 

 of thirty-three, his hair was grey ; repeated d^^sentcries had di- 

 minished his strength ; obstinate ophthalmia had threatened him 

 with loss of sight. His companions were still more exhausted 

 and reduced ; scarcely any[of them lived long enough to publish 

 his narrative himself, and it was upon Pallas that the task of 

 rendering this tribute to their memory also devolved. 



The great objects which he had seen, had impressed them- 

 selves too forcibly upon his mind, to allow him to remain con- 

 tented with the journal which he had hurriedly traced of them. 

 He had profoundly observed the earth, the plants, the animals 

 and the men ; his observations, cherished and combined by re- 

 flection, became to him the subjects of so many works, in which 

 he clearly displayed his power. He gave the history of some of 

 the most celebrated animals of Siberia, the musk, the glutton, 

 the sable, the white bear * ; and this history is so full and so 

 well related, that it may be said there is not a quadruped, not 

 even the most common, so well known to us as these. 



The glires alone furnished him with matter for an entire vo- 

 lume, so numerous were the species which he had discover- 

 ed. Their history and anatomy were treated with all the rich- 

 ness of which BufFon and Daubenton alone had hitherto given 

 an example ; and although, from modesty, he did not form new 

 genera of them, his descriptions were so well executed, that any 

 intelligent systematist could readily extract the generic characters. 

 The class of quadrupeds also owes to him the accurate know- 

 ledge of a species of solipede, intermediate between the ass and 

 the horse, a sort of natural mule which is propagated in the de- 

 serts of Tartary -[• ; that of a new species of wild cat from which 

 he thinks our Angora cats are derived | ; it owes also to him 

 more perfect ideas than had previously been formed regarding 

 the wild ass of these deserts ||, regarding the small buffalo, whose 



• These last four numbers appeared from 1773 to 1780. M. Rudolph! 

 mentions that he intended to print six more of them. 



t Equus hemionus, Nov. Com. Petrop. xix. p. 394. pi. 7» 



X Felis Manul, Ibid. 1781, Part i. 



II In the new Nordische Beytrmge, v. ii. p. 82. pi. 1, and in the Act. Pe- 

 trop. I. 



