VOL. LXIV.] PHILOSOPHICAL TKANSACTIONS. 56g 



XLV. On a New Map of the Northern Archipelago, and a Specimen of Native 

 Iron. By M. de Stehlin, Couns. of State to her Imperial Majesty of Russia, p. 46l. 



As a testimony of his attachment to the r. s., and as the first tribute he owed 

 to that learned body, he had the honour to transmit herewith 2 novelties, which 

 he thought worthy of their notice. The first was a new map, and his prelimi- 

 nary description of a new Archipelago in the North, discovered a few years before 

 by the Russians, in the n. e. beyond Kamtshatka. The second was a piece of 

 raw and native iron ; of which Mr. Pallas, one of the k. s. of Petersburgh 

 academicians, who had 5 years been employed in making researches in natural 

 history, in the provinces of the Russian empire, had discovered in J 773 a 

 hillock or mass, weighing 50 puds, the pud consisting of 40 Russian pounds, 

 in Siberia, in the mountains called Nemir, between the rivulets Ubec and Sisim, 

 which fall into the river Jenisei, scarcely 100 fathoms from a rich mine of load- 

 stone or iron. 



The existence of raw or native iron has hitherto been doubted; but M. de S 

 almost thinks that this discovery determined the question ; especially when it is 

 considered, that in the whole district where this mass was found, there is not 

 the least trace extant of any ancient forge, nor any place that might leave room 

 to suspect that there had been, in former times, any works of iron ore, which 

 had been melted, and afterwards abandoned to that mass. Should any doubt 

 remain concerning the existence of the native iron, and the authenticity of this 

 discovery, he should rather suppose that, many ages ago, there might have been 

 a volcano, which by melting the iron ore had formed the above mass, to which 

 might afterwards have been. joined the little hyacinthine spars and other stones 

 now mixed with it. 



Translation of an Article in the Petersburg Gazette of Sept. 6, 1773. 



" The academy expects from Siberia a black mass weighing about 40 puds,* 

 of raw or native, soft and flexible iron, which the academician Pallas has dis- 

 covered during his residence in the neighbourhood of the river Jenisei. This 

 very remarkable and huge lump is of a spongy texture, of the most perfect and 

 malleable iron, whose cavities are closely filled with small polished pieces of 

 hyacinthine spar, some round, some with flat surfaces, and all of the colour of 

 transparent amber. The mass is rusty only on the surface ; but the interior 

 has been preserved by a kind of black varnish spread all over the iron, which is 

 of an irregular form blunted at the corners. This iron may be bent and 

 hammered when cold, and, when moderately heated, may be shaped into nails 

 and other tools ; but, in a violent heat, and especially if, in order to separate it 



* The mass in its present state, weighs 152 Russian pounds. 



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