220 Biographical Memoir of Peter Simon Pallas. 



gleet and discouragement which foreigners met with in the 

 reign of Elizabeth, occasioned these first attempts to be lost 

 sight of; but Catherine 11, who had in view to make the path 

 by which she came to the throne forgotten, amid the glory of 

 every kind with which she invested herself, could not overlook 

 so efficacious a means. Besides, her attention was roused to this 

 object by a particular circumstance. 



At the time of the first transit of Venus, in 1 763, France had 

 sent the Abbe Chappe d'Auteroche to Tobolsk, in order to 

 make astronomical observations. On his return he published 

 a narrative, the sarcastic tone of which so irritated the Em- 

 press, that it is said she took the trouble of refuting it herself. 



She was therefore unwilling that foreigners should undertake 

 the observation of the second transit, which was to take place in 

 1769 > and, in selecting for this object astronomers from her 

 own academy, she judged it necessary to send along with them 

 naturalists capable of examining the country. 



Pallas had the good fortune to see himself appointed to take 

 a part in this undertaking. Good fortune I call it, because 

 he looked upon this appointment as such. A distant jour- 

 ney cannot fail to be attractive to a young man, and more espe- 

 cially to a young naturalist; and this desire of searching for 

 new productions has probably deprived us of many discoveries 

 of the mind. Pallas himself furnishes a proof of this ; for al- 

 though endowed with an activity that knew no limits, and less 

 exposed than any one to allow himself to be distracted from his 

 meditations by fatigue, it cannot by any means be doubted 

 that he would have rendered more benefit to science by his ge- 

 nius than by his journeys. 



He displayed in a striking manner the union of these two qua- 

 lities during the space of about a year that he remained at Peters- 

 burg. In the midst of all the preparations for so great a journey, 

 he digested several new writings *, and gave to the Academy his 

 famous memoir on the bones of large quadrupeds that are found 

 in such abundance in Siberia, in which he shews that there oc- 

 cur in that country elephants, rhinoceroses, buffaloes, and many 

 Other southern genera, and that their quantity is almost incalcu- 



• Printed at Berlin during his journey from 1769 to 1774. 



