392 Russian Discoveries, Se. 
cept the bat, has sufficient muscular power in its limbs, however 
assisted by an expansion of surface, to strike the air with the ve- 
locity requisite for flight. Some quadrupeds, reptiles, and even 
fish, possess the power of adv ancing through the air, but always 
in a very limited degree. It is in the bird alone that we find the 
most perfect adaptation of structure to the purposes of flight. The 
frame of their skeleton, the position and figure of the wings, the 
situation of the muscles, and the mechanism of their action, were 
severally pointed out as having an express relation to the element 
in which nature intended them to move; and the various modi- 
fications which these circumstances present in the different or-. 
ders of birds were particularly specified. The minute structure of 
the feathers, when investigated by the help of the microscope, 
appeers highly curious, and exhibits a singular refinement of art 
in the means by which their fibres are mechanically locked into 
each other, so as to preserve a continuity of surface. The sin- 
gular mechanism by which birds sustain ‘themselves by means of 
one foot on their perch, when they roost, was also detailed. 
Several skeletons of birds and quadrupeds were exhibited in il- 
lustration of the leading points considered in these lectures, 
which close the subject of the progressive motion of animals. 
RUSSIAN DISCOVERIES,—COCHRANE THE TRAVELLER.— 
IMPERIAL UKASE. 
Since the general peace of Europe, and more particularly 
within the last three years, the Russian Government has been an- 
xiously and eagerly employed in prosecuting discoveries in every 
part of the globe. In the Southern Ocean, her ships have pene- 
trated the fields of ice as far as the seventieth parallel of latitude, 
and discovered, it is said, islands which had escaped the search- 
ing eye of Cook: they boast of having rounded the Sandwich 
land of that celebrated navigator ; and of having ascertained 
that the Southern Shetland, which was supposed to be a con- 
tinent connected with it, consists ouly of numerous groups of 
small islands. They have sent land expeditions into the un- 
known regions of Tartary, behind Thibet, and into the interior 
of the north-western ade of North Arena Men of science 
have been commissioned to explore the northern boundaries of 
Siberia, and to determine points, on that extensive coast, hitherto 
of doubtful position. In February 1821, Baron Wrangel, an 
officer of great merit, and of considerable science, left his head- 
quarters on the Nishney Kolyma, to settle, by astronomical ob- 
servations, the position of Shalatzkoi-Noss, or the north-east 
cape of Asia, which he found to lie in lat. 70° 05’ N. consider- 
ably lower than it is usually placed on the maps. Having ar- 
ranged this point, he undertook the hazardous enterprise of 
crossing - 
