risibility upon his visit to the Children of the Mist. But although in these days of Paixhans and percussion, bows and arrows certainly appear rather anomalous, they are by no means contemptible weapons in the hands of some of the Siberian tribes. Of this Mr Erman had abundant opportunity to convince himself, especially when his ramble northwards from Tobolsk brought him amongst the Ostyaks of the river Obi. The ordinary hunting weapons of these people are bows six feet long, of very slight curve, and from which four-feet arrows are discharged with murderous effect. Much practice and strength are required to draw these bows; and our scientific traveller, who, not having taken the necessary precaution of shielding the left arm with a piece of horn, from the recoil of the string, had been unable to draw his bow to more than one third of the arrow's length, was not a little astounded to see an Ostyak pigmy, with sore eyes and a sickly aspect, send a blunt arrow one hundred and sixty feet, and strike the object aimed at, the stem of a larch, near its summit, fully sixty feet from the ground. Blunt arrows, headed with flattened iron balls, are used to kill sables and squirrels, that the skin may not be injured; the sharp ones are a settler for any quadruped the country produces. After many days' journey through Tatar villages of wooden huts, and towns that are little better, the first view of Tobolsk, obtained some miles before reaching the place, is quite imposing; and the traveller, who might think he had got a few stages beyond civilisation, is cheered and encouraged by the sight of church-towers, lofty monasteries, and well-built houses. In vain does he seek an inn. Such things are unknown in Siberia; and, if he has no acquaintance in the town, he must apply to the police-master, who recommends him to the hospitality of an inhabitant, by whom he is made welcome during his stay, without demand for remuneration, although, if proffered, it will sometimes be accepted. In this manner Mr Erman and his companions were accommodated in the upper storey of a well-built wooden house; and here their progress eastward was arrested by the character of the weather. It was the commencement of October, the period of transition from summer to winter, and the traveller's entrance into the town was rendered memorable by a heavy fall of snow--"white flies," as the postilions called the flakes, which they beheld with much pleasure. Their satisfaction was probably owing to the fact that in Siberia the coldest part of the year is the most favourable for travelling, a matter of interest to people of their profession. But the moment of transition, whilst the struggle lasts between summer and winter, when snow encumbers the ground, and frost has not yet hardened it, is known, as well as the similar period at the close of winter, as "the time of the unroading," (spoiling of the roads;) and the Russians have even manufactured a verb "to be unroaded." The snow