278 SIR RODERICK I. MURCHISON’S ADDRESS— RUSSIA. [May 24, 1858. 
esting. Lieutenant Ussoltzoff presented to the Society the journal 
of his travels from the mouth of the Nertscha to the mouth of the 
Bargousine, embracing about 1500 versts. He determined the 
geographical situation of the principal points, and collected valu- 
able information about the nomades of Olekma and Karenga. 
Lieutenant Orlof also presented his itinerary, embracing about 
2500 versts. It would be premature, says M. Lamansky in his 
memoir of 1856, to construct on these data alone a map of the valley of 
the Vittim, before the longitude of the river is determined. Neverthe- 
less, if we compare the new sketch maps, prepared by the travellers, 
with the old maps, we observe some important changes. Thus, the 
sources of the Nertscha Yablonoi-Krebet were not ascertained 
before, and the neighbourhood of the Lake Baountof was totally 
unknown. It can now, however, be said that the geographical, 
positions of all the principal points of the Trans-Baikalian district 
are determined. 
Among these researches, the natural history descriptions and 
collections of M. Badde are fraught with deep interest. Com- 
mencing his observations in 1855, in the basin watered by the 
Lower and Upper Angara rivers, which fall into the Lake Baikal, 
M. Badde also explored the borders of that internal mass of water 
which are now rendered familiar to us by the striking paintings 
of Atkinson. The following year (1856) was entirely devoted 
to an examination of a region extending along the frontiers 
of China, from the Yablonoi mouniains by the Argon river, a 
tributary of the great Amur. In this long tour he made zoological 
and botanical excursions into the elevated mountains of Tchokondo, 
the steppes of Abbagaitouy, the Lake of Torey, and the environs of 
the Dalai-Nor Lake. 
In the tracts which surround the alpine Tchokondo, he observed 
that the vegetable products and animals occupied six distinct 
regions or terraces, from one of which, and at a height of 8200 feet, 
he collected many curious species of plants and rare animals. On 
the Lake Torey he watched the autumnal migration of the birds, 
and gathered the plants of a great adjacent saline steppe. Noting 
the periods of hybernation and reanimation of certain quadrupeds, 
M. Badde has further shown that, since the journey of Pallas in 
1772, the herds of that remarkable animal the Aegoceras Argoli of 
the great naturalist, which then abounded in the mountains of Odon 
Tchalon, in Dahuria, have recently (1831) been entirely destroyed 
by a severe winter in the mountains of Soktui and Sehir, to which 
