l6 of captain Billings. 0"^y '®' 



grow but a large species of horse radiih, turnips, 

 and winter cabbage leaves, for they never stock so 

 as to take a round form ; that the natives are strangers 

 to bread, (except those in government employ who 

 are served with flour, as no species of corn will grow ; 

 in fliort that they live intirely on fifti, which it is their 

 summer occupation to catch and dry ; but that thosa 

 who have money, or rather merchandize and brandy, 

 m«y occasionally regale themselves with a haunch 

 of rein deer, purchased from the Koriaks who visit 

 them in winter. 



He likewise informed me that no man can go to 

 any distance from home in summer, as their only 

 conveyance is in sledges drawn by dogs, which can- 

 not of course travel then, and acknowledged that 

 few days are sufficiently hot during its ihort dura- 

 tion, to throw off their fur coat. But after giving 

 us this account of his country, climate, and the ma- 



buri-ing it in a hole in the earth on a grate, so as to receive the oil that 

 falls from it in tlie operation) is substituted to that of the filh roe in 

 the Kamtchatka procefs ; and I presume both new to your Britifh tan- 

 ners, who have got a century beyond these primitive family arts, al- 

 though we see for certain purposes they are not to be despised, as 

 they prevent insects from executing the part afsigned to them in the 

 beautiful arrangement of the universe. 



I ihall probably in a future letter give you a more ample account 

 of the preparation of all the species of leather manufactured in Rufsia, 

 v.'hich may be called national, (this curious paper is received and will 

 appear in due time,) as I presume that all of them will be more or lefs 

 interesting, as diiFering from tlie highly improved state of the art in 

 Great Britain. Such comparisons must be curious even if no utility 

 ftiould result from them, which I by no means can take upon me to 

 say will be the case, as such procefses must tend to throw light on 

 the philosophy of tanning, or in other words on the antisceptic powers 

 ■cf vegetable substances, in preserving drad animal matter. 



