Biographical Memoir of Peter Simon Pallas, 9X1 



Assuredly the naturalist whose first glance was so penetrating, 



would have cleared up the chaos in which these invertebrate 



animals were enveloped, had he continued to pursue the inves- 



'■ ligation ; but unfortunately, he published his ideas before they 



were sufficiently matured. 



He did not separate the sepiae from the slugs so much as they 

 should be separated ; he imagined the medusae to have an affi- 

 nity to these two genera which they do not possess ; he admitted 

 also an affinity, which does not exist, between the bivalves and 

 the echinodermata ; and, lastly, he associated with these latter, 

 on the one hand, the actiniae, which are zoophytes ; and, on the 

 other, the sea-acorns or balani, which are much more closely al- 

 lied to the bivalves. 



These errors, which a little more examination would have en- 

 abled him to have avoided, contributed, perhaps, to reserve for 

 other times a necessary revolution in the track to which he was ad- 

 vancing, — so much are the conquests of mind, like other con- 

 quests, subject to be arrested by the smallest accident. The most 

 astonishing circumstance is, that he himself should have over- 

 looked these beautiful perceptions. Having returned to Berlin in 

 1767, he reprinted, with many additions, his Miscellanea, under 

 the title of Spicilegia Zoologica, and omitted unquestionably 

 the most valuable memoir of the first collection ; nor did he ever 

 again turn his mind to the subject. 



These two works spread wide the reputation of Pallas, and 

 various governments made proposals to him. Perhaps he would 

 have preferred his own, had he received the least encouragement 

 from it; but, as too often happens, it was in his own country 

 that his value was least appreciated. When thus under the ne- 

 cessity of quitting his native land, he did not hesitate what other 

 to select. The country which presented a newer field to his re- 

 searches was preferred, and he accepted a place which was of- 

 fered him by Catherine II. in the Academy of Petersburg. 



The Russian Empire, in the ninth century, the period at 

 which history begins to speak of it, already almost extended 

 from the Baltic to the Euxine Sea. Its existence was first an- 

 nounced to Europe by its bold enterprises against the Turkish 

 Empire. Being soon converted to Christianity, its sovereigns 

 allied themselves with the Kings of France, and entered into po- 



