MEMOIR OF PALLAS. 57 
lastly, limestone strata the most external. “ It may 
be stated,” says Cuvier, “ that this great fact, clearly 
expressed in 1777, in a memoir read to the Peters- 
burg Academy (Art. Petro. 1778) m the presence 
of Gustavus III. King of Sweden, gave birth to a 
new view of geology; and that Saussure, Deluc, 
and Werner, starting from this observation, arrived 
at a correct knowledge of the true structure of the 
earth, very different indeed from the absurd ideas 
of previous writers.” } 
All the writmgs on which we have hitherto 
dwelt, more especially belong to the department of 
natural history im the more extended signification 
of the term; this, however, is not the case with 
regard to our author's history of the Mongolian 
nations.* A work which must interest every well 
educated man, for it is perhaps the most classical 
treatise on the varieties of our race that exists in 
any language. 
The name of Mongul might be extended to all 
those tribes of the north and east of Asia, whose 
oblique eyes, yellow complexion, black and lank 
hair, slender beard, and projecting cheek bones, 
make them appear so frightful to us; and one 
tribe of which ravaged Europe, under Attila, in the 
fifth century. At the same time the name belongs 
more especially to another tribe, which, under 
Gengis-Khan, in the eleventh century, established 
the basis of the most formidable dominion which 
* Collection of Documents concerning the Monguls, in 
German, 2 vols, 4to. 1776, 1801. 
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