34 NORTH AMERICAN INSECTS. 



information with regard to herself and her hus- 

 band. 



Speaking of Baktsckiseray, the former residence 

 of the Khans of the Crimea, Mr. Ditson says, " In 

 this vicinity lived Pallas, who came here and wrote 

 his famous book of travels, and so pleased the Em- 

 press Catharine, by the glowing description he gave 

 of the country, that she thought she could not re- 

 ward him better than by giving him a portion of 

 it, with an income of two thousand rubles. Pallas 

 considered it but as a species of exile, and was over- 

 whelmed. He saw that he was the dupe of a simple 

 desire to make the newly-acquired territory grateful 

 to his sovereign, and he sat himself down, without 

 the power or courage to complain, suffering in body 

 and mind till the shades of an unending night veiled 

 him from the world." 



Now the facts are these : Professor Pallas, Member 

 of the Imperial Academy of Science at St. Petersburg, 

 Councillor of State, and Knight of several Orders, 

 was born in 1741, at Berlin, where he acquired a 

 distinguished reputation by his researches and wri- 

 tings on Natural History. When the Empress, Catha- 

 rine II. of Russia, learned the fame of this great man, 

 and his eminence in his department of science, she 

 invited him to her court, and then proposed to him. 

 as a Naturalist, to survey Siberia, the Crimea, and 



