Pallas now turned his face towards the east, traversed the desert regions which lie between the Selinga and the Onon, the principal branch of the Amoor, and having pushed his researches to within a very short distance of the Chinese frontier, returned by a different route to Selinginsk, leaving to M. Sokolof and others the honour of exploring the frontiers of Mongolia, along the banks of the Argoon and Amoor. His health, indeed, now began to suffer from constant fatigue, and he was therefore fully justified in relinquishing this portion of his task; but I cannot easily pardon him for pretending to have been actuated by the desire of botanizing on the banks of the Selinga, since, if botanizing was his object, it was to be presumed that the wild shores of the Amoor would have afforded a still more ample and extraordinary field for his researches. During his stay at Selinginsk, he observed, among other curious animals and birds, the blue crow, which was easily taken, as its young were hitherto unfledged; and a species of small white hare, which was found in great numbers in the little islands in the Selinga. Besides these there was the leaping hare, which, mingling at night among the sheep, frightened them by its bounding motions. The Mongols, who are fond of its flesh when roasted, imagine that it sucks the ewes; as the vulgar in England report of the hedgehog and the cow. Previous to his finally quitting the country, he made another excursion to the frontiers of China, principally, it would seem, for the purpose of studying the botany of those districts, when the flowers were clothed in all the beauty of summer. The road to Kiakta traverses a large sandy plain, and afterward a succession of rocky mountains, entirely destitute of wood. In this latter district our traveller observed a species of locust, by whose flight the natives could foretel with certainty whether the weather would be fair or otherwise. They mounted aloft on the wing previous to rainy weather, and the noise of their motions resembled that of castanets. After remaining some short time in the vicinity of Kiakta, he once more returned to Selinginsk, and began to make the necessary preparations for retracing their footsteps to Krasnoiarsk, where they again intended to pass the winter. Accordingly, on the 3d of July, Pallas and a part of his companions departed from Selinginsk, and proceeded towards the Baikal.