soft mass, exactly resembling pewter. As the interior, however, still continued fluid, a small portion of the surface presented numerous wrinkles branching out from each other, but the greater part was sufficiently smooth. The same thing took place with a still larger quantity which I placed in the open air. This mass of frozen mercury was as pliable as lead but if bent suddenly, would break more easily than pewter; and when flattened into sheets, appeared somewhat knotty. I tried to beat it out with the hammer, but being quite cold, the mercury fell from it in drops. The same thing took place when you touched this mass with the finger, the top of which was instantly benumbed with cold by the simple contact. I then placed it in a moderately warm room, and it melted like wax placed over the fire. The drops separated from the surface, which melted gradually. The intensity of the cold diminished towards the evening.” In the month of January, 1773, Pallas began to make preparations for returning to Petersburg, and departing on the 22d, pushed on with the utmost rapidity to Tomsk. During this journey, he discovered the execrable principles upon which it was attempted to people Siberia. The refuse of the people, the lame, the sick, the infirm, and the old, had been collected together, and sent thither to die. Men had been torn, for this purpose, from their wives and families. Women, for some reason or another, had not been allowed to emigrate from the west in sufficient numbers, and vice and misery flourished in their absence. Man, deprived of the society of women, necessarily degenerates into a ferocious beast, contemning all laws, and every regulation of morality. “It is not good that man should be alone.” Whenever new colonies are established, women should be numerous. It is they who are the grand instruments of civilization.--The cavern, the desert hut, when inhabited by a woman, already contains the germs of humanity, of hospitality, of improvement; but without her is a den, a haunt of ungovernable passions,--a refuge from the storm, but not a home. In crossing a bridge over the Dooroosh, in the country of the Votiaks, our traveller was placed in a more perilous condition than he had experienced during any former period of his travels. His horses had already reached the shore, when the bridge, which must have been a very frail structure, gave way under his carriage, and he must infallibly have been precipitated into the stream, had not the spirited horses dashed on at the moment, and dragged up the carriage from amid the falling ruins.