"The _Samoyt_ hath his name (as the _Russe_ saith) of eating himselfe: as if in times past they lived as the _Cannibals_, eating one another. Which they make more probable, because at this time they eate all kind of raw flesh, whatsoeuer it bee, euen the very carrion that lyeth in the ditch. But as the _Samoits_ themselves will say, they were called _Samoit_, that is, _of themselves_, as though they were _Indigenæ_, or people bred upon that very soyle that never changed their seate from one place to another, as most Nations have done. They are clad in Seale-skinnes, with the hayrie side outwards downe as low as the knees, with their Breeches and Netherstocks of the same, both men and women. They are all Blacke hayred, naturally beardless. And therefore the Men are hardly discerned from the Women by their lookes: saue that the Women wear a locke of hayre down along both their eares." (_Treatise of Russia and the adjoining Regions_, written by Doctor Giles Fletcher, Lord Ambassador from the late Queen, Everglorious Elizabeth, to Theodore, then Emperor of Russia, A.D. 1588. _Purchas_, iii. p. 413.) In nearly the same way the Samoyeds are described by G. De Veer, in his account of Barents's Second Voyage in 1595. Serebrenikoff, according to Nordensköld, maintains that _Samodin_ should be written instead of _Samoyed_. For _Samoyed_ means "self eater," while _Samodin_ denotes an "individual," "one who cannot be mistaken for another," and, as the Samoyeds were never cannibals, Serebrenikoff gives a preference to the latter name, which is used by the Russians at Chabarova, and appears to be a literal translation of the name which the Samoyeds give themselves. Nordenskiöld, however, considers it probable that the old tradition of man-eaters (_androphagi_), living in the north, which onginated with Herodotus, and was afterwards universally adopted in the geographical literature of the Middle Ages, reappears in Russianised form in the name _Samoyed_. With all due respect for Nordenskiöld, I am inclined to agree with Serebrenikoff. In the account of the journey which the Italian minorite, Joannes de Piano Carpini, undertook in High Asia in 1245-47, an extraordinary account of the Samoyeds and neighbouring tribes is given. (See Vol. II. of these Collections, pp. 28 and 95).--I give a very curious engraving of Samoyeds from Schleissing.--Nordenskiöld inserts, in his _Voyage of the Vega_, the following interesting communication from Professor Ahlquist, of Helsingfors:--.