FUTURE PLANS 249 



although I have already sent five. This winter I will have clean 

 copies made of all my observations and will send them in the 

 spring. In the summer I intend to go to Lower Kamchatka Post 

 and in the [following] winter to Anadyrsk. Should I, however, 

 be recalled I should be quite content also. My field notes I will 

 send in the rough because I have neither the time nor the skill 

 of a formal historiographer, nor, moreover, is that my function. 

 Mr. Plenisner has been recalled and is spending the winter with 

 me at Bolshaya River. He is a great fur temporis [thief of time]. 

 He and Mr. Berkhan wish to be remembered kindly to Your 

 Highness. Also please give my kindest regards to Professor 

 Muller,22 Dr. Amman,23 Mr. Delisle,24 and Secretary Fedrowiz.25 

 I ask again most earnestly for your gracious favor and a word 

 from you, especially about matters that concern me. 



With hearty good wishes to Your Highness for all possible 

 health and pleasure, I remain. 



Your Highness' most humble servant, 



Georg Wilhelm Steller 



Bolshaya River 

 Nov. 4, 1742"^^ 



Suppl. No. I, 1869, p. 28). Steller sent to Gmelin for transmission to the 

 Senate a report and some plants from Okhotsk on August 20, 1740 

 (Plieninger, Reliquiae . . . commercii epistolici, 1861, p. 173). In 

 his report to the Senate of November 16, 1742, Steller mentions (Pekar- 

 skii, op. cit., p. 13) that he had sent a report to the same body on March 

 31, 1 741, from Bolsheretsk. Some of these reports may be among those 

 here referred to. 



22 G. F. Miiller. See, above, this appendix, footnote i. 



23 Johann Amman (1707-1741), member of the St. Petersburg Academy 

 and professor of botany. 



24 Joseph Nicolas Dehsle. See Vol. i, p. 32, and the present volume, 

 p. 70, footnote 148. 



25 This person cannot be identified. As he is not mentioned in Pekarskii, 

 Istoriya Akademii Nauk, Vol. i, St. Petersburg, 1870, no secretary of 

 the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences seems to be meant. 



26 The letter was received by Gmelin on October 29, 1743. Gmelin 

 was by that time in St. Petersburg. 



