Imperial Academy of Sciences of St Petersburg. 101 



establishment with which this capital is honoured, and which 

 has risen, as by enchantment, thanks to the indefatigable and en- 

 lightened zeal of its director, to the rank of the first botanical 

 gardens of Europe. The scientific world waits with impatience 

 the publication of the Flora of the Altai, of which Dr Bunge 

 himself, in the neighbourhood of Zmeinogorsk, shewed my friend 

 M. Ehrenberg some interesting productions. It was unques- 

 tionably the first time that a traveller from Abyssinia, Dongola, 

 Sinai and Palestine, ascended the mountains of Riddersky, co- 

 vered with perpetual snows. 



The geognostical description of the southern part of the Ural 

 has been confided to two young naturalists, MM. Hoffmann and 

 Helmerssen, one of whom was the first who gave an accurate 

 account of the volcanoes of the South Sea. This choice is due 

 to an enlightened minister, a friend of science and its cultivators, 

 the Count Cancrin, whose kind attention, activity and foresight, 

 have impressed my fellow-labourers and myself with a gratitude 

 Hot to be effaced. MM. Helmerssen and Hoffmann, pupils of 

 the celebrated school of Dorpat, have studied for two years 

 with success the different ramifications of the Ural Mountains, 

 from the great Taganai, and the granites of Iremel, to beyond 

 the plain of Gouberlinsk, which is connected, more to the south, 

 with the Mougodjares Mountains, and to the east between Lake 

 Aral and the basin of the Caspian Sea. It was there that M. 

 Lemni, in spite of the severity of the winter, made the first ac- 

 curate astronomical observations that have been obtained of this 

 arid yet inhabited country. We had the great satisfaction of 

 being accompanied for a month by MM. Hoffmann and Hel- 

 merssen, and it was by them that we were first shewn a forma- 

 tion of volcanic amygdaloids, near Grasnuschinskaia, the only 

 ones that have as yet been discovered in the long chain of the 

 Ural which separates Europe and Asia, which presents the most 

 abundant eruptions of metals on its eastern slope, and which 

 contains, in veins or in alluvium, gold, platina, osmiuret of iri- 

 dium, diamonds, discovered by Count Polier in alluvia to the 

 west of the lofty mountain of Catschcanar, zircon, sapphire, 

 amethyst, ruby, topaz, beryl, garnet, anaiase, found by M. Rose, 

 the ce\vlanite, and other valuable productions of India and 

 Brazil. 



I might extend the list of important labours performed in the 



