162 Geographical Collections. 



mutual love and confidence, make us forget that they are pagans. In the 

 isolated state in which M. Graah found them, there was nothing but fidelity, 

 hospitality, good nature, and kindness in these children of nature ; which 

 enabled him to overcome the many obstacles which nature presented to the 

 accomplishment of his object. For thirteen months, he lost only one hatchet, 

 which, indeed, he believes to have been left somewhere ; and his letters and 

 journals have been brought to us by a Greenlander, who carried them from 

 Nugarbik to Nemortalik. Polygamy is not very common among them ; 

 they do not change their wives, and their morals appear irreproachable. 

 The husbands neither beat nor dispute with their wives, and were never 

 seen looking ill naturedly at them. 



Although M. Graah possessed things which pleased them very much, 

 nothing was ever asked from him, not even by the children, unless he had 

 received a service from them ; in that case they always demanded some little 

 gratification ; but this was generally limited to a pinch of snuff, which 

 perfectly satisfied them ; tobacco, cofiee, and spirits, afforded them the 

 greatest delight. 



The dried flesh of seals appears to form the chief part of the food of the 

 natives, and they also eat game and fish. {Extract from the Journal of 

 Captain Graah.) — Bull, de la Soc. de Geog. October, 1830. 



Notice by M. de Humboldt of his Travels in Siberia. ( Read to the Academy 

 of Sciences, Oct. 11, 1830.) 



The joiUTiey made last year by MM. Ehrenberg, Gustavus Rose, and 

 myself, under the auspices of the Emperor of Russia, to the mines of the 

 Ural and Altai, to the frontiers of Chinese Dzongary, and to the Caspian 

 Sea, yielded a variety of observations considerable enough to form the sub- 

 ject of particular memoirs and Avorks. We possess geological collections 

 made by ourselves, and more complete than those which have been hitherto 

 brought from that part of Asia into Europe. They are arranged by M. 

 Rose, and deposited in the museum of Berlin by the side of the geognostical 

 collections of Mexico, Quito, South Brazil, the Canary Islands, and different 

 regions of Eiu-ope. I am engaged in concentrating the principal results of 

 ovu* labours in a physical table of the countries we have traversed, a work 

 which will appear under the title of Geognostical, Magnetical, and Astrono- 

 mical Observations. M. Ehrenberg, whose former travels in Nubia, Dongola, 

 and Abyssinia, supplied him with means of comparison, very fertile in new 

 views, will treat, in a separate volume, of the geographical distribution 

 of plants between the Volga, Irtisch, and Obi, between the Ural and the 

 step of Kirguises. He undertakes also the zoological descriptions, espe- 

 cially those of fresh water shells, insects, and fishes, with which the great rivers 

 and the Caspian Sea abound. I shall have the honour of communicating to the 

 Academy, at another sitting, an extract from a memoir not yet printed, and 

 in which M. Ehrenberg, after having characterized the variety of the royal 

 tiger of India, which appears north of the great Cordillera of the celestial 

 mountains ( Thaanchan,) and even to the north of Tarbagitai, and the dioptase 

 district, explains the differences of the Felis pardus of Cuvier, of the Felis 

 chalybeata of Hermann, which is the Felis pardus of Temminck, and of the 

 Felis Irbis (the long-haired Panther,) which- Pallas has confounded with the 

 F. pardus of Africa ; and of which we have obtained a beautiful skin from 

 Semipolatinsk, on the banks of the Irtisch. — Ann. des Sci. Nat. Oct. 1830. 



United States' Expedition The scientific expedition, for the exploration 



of the South Seas, fitted out by the United States, has entirely failed. The 

 crew of the ship mutinied, and, after having set the superintendants of the 

 expedition ashore in Peru, carried the vessel into St Mary's, a little south 

 of Conception. 



