20 MEMOIR OF PALLAS. 
in the subsequent history of Pallas; and its great 
utility to every student of science is so manifest, 
that it is matter of surprise the example is not more 
generally, not to say universally, followed. This 
acquirement was so little troublesome to the learner, 
that he still kept ahead of his youthful comrades in 
his other studies; and not content with what was 
taught by his masters, he employed his leisure hours 
in the study of natural history ; and with such suc- 
cess, that at the age of fifteen, he sketched ingenious 
classifications of several groups of animals. 
It was in his fifteenth year that Pallas entered 
seriously upon his professional pursuits, and com- 
menced attendance on lectures upon anatomy and 
physiology, botany and medicine, under Professors 
Meckel, Sproegel, Rolof, and his father. So apt a 
scholar was he in these several branches of science, 
that in the beginning of the year 1758 we find him, 
according to the account he gave to Mr Coxe, ena- 
bled to read a course of public lectures on anatomy.* 
Yet although thus occupied in his professional Ja- 
bours, he found leisure to prosecute, under the special 
auspices of one of his preceptors, Martin Schoeling, 
the study of entomology and other branches of 
zoology. In the autumn of the same year he re- 
paired to the university of Halle, where he attended 
the lectures of the celebrated Segner on mathematics 
* See Coxe’s Travels, and Rees’s Cyclopedia, under “ Pal- 
las ;” where may be found by far the best sketch of his history 
we have seen in the English tongue. 
