PALLAS, PETER SIMON, a distinguished naturalist and geographer, born on the 22d of September 1741, was the son of Simon Pallas, a surgeon in the Prussian army, and professor of surgery at Berlin. He received the early part of his education in his father's house, and his instructors bore ample testimony to the rapidity of his progress. At the age of fifteen he began to attend medical lectures; and he applied himself so closely to practical anatomy, that in 1758 he was found qualified to deliver a course of public lectures on that science. In the same year he went to Halle, and became the pupil of Segner, continuing also his studies of zoology, and, in particular, of entomology, with great assiduity. In 1759 he removed to Göttingen, where he made a variety of experiments on poisons, and on other active medical substances, and commenced his observations on parasitical animals. In July 1760 he went on to Leyden, in order to attend the lectures of Albinus, Gaubius, and Muschenbroek; and at the end of the same year he took his degree of Doctor of Physic. The following summer he proceeded to England, principally with the view of completing his medical education, although he devoted the greater part of his time to the active pursuit of natural history, being assisted and encouraged by the friendship of Peter Colinson and of some other British naturalists, which procured for him, a few years afterwards, the distinction of having his name inserted in the list of the foreign members of the Royal Society, at the early age of twenty-three. He visited several parts of the coast of England, in order to examine its marine productions; and his love of natural history enabled him to profit in a similar manner
by an accident which detained him for some time at Harwich, on his return to the Continent, in the spring of 1762.
Having paid a visit to his native city, he went again to the Hague, and established himself as a resident there under the patronage of Gaubius. On occasion of the publication of a miscellaneous work on zoology, which he dedicated to the Prince of Orange, he proposed a plan for an expedition to the Cape of Good Hope, and to the Dutch East Indies, which he offered to conduct in person; but although the project was encouraged by Gaubius, and approved by the prince, his father's interference prevented its execution, and obliged him to return to Berlin. His filial affection, however, was not strong enough to induce him to refuse the invitation of the Empress Catharine to St Petersburg, where he accepted, in the year 1767, the appointment of professor of natural history in the Imperial Academy of Sciences.
The first few months of his residence at St Petersburg were employed in preparing his Zoological Gleanings for publication, and in making catalogues of some collections of natural history. It was now that the more active career of his public life was about to commence; and in 1768 he undertook, in common with Falk, Lepechin, and Guldénstadt, the conduct of an expedition sent out by the empress, for the joint purposes of observing the transit of Venus, and of investigating the natural history and geography of Siberia and the neighbouring countries. The object of their researches for the first summer was the province of Kasan, and the winter was passed at Simbirsk; the next year they examined the shores of the Caspian and the borders of Calmuck Tartary; after which they returned through Orenburg, and passed the winter at Ufa. In 1770 Pallas crossed the Uralian Mountains to Catharinenburg, and, after examining the mines in that neighbourhood, proceeded to Tobolsk. The next year he went to the Altaic Mountains, traced the course of the Irtysh to Kolyvan, went on to Tomsk, and observed the natural freezing of quicksilver at Krasnoyarsk, on the Yenisei, in Lat. 56. 30. N. He proceeded in March 1772 by Irkutsk across the Lake Baikal, as far as Khatanga, and returned to Krasnoyarsk. In 1773 he visited Tara, Astracan, and Tzaritzin, on the Volga, and returned to St Petersburg in 1774, after an absence of six years. About ten years later he was made a member of the Board of Mines, with an additional salary of L200 a year; and he was complimented with the title of a Knight of St Vladimir. The empress purchased his collection of natural history for a price one-third greater than his demand, and allowed him, at the same time, to keep it in his possession for the remainder of his life.
In 1794 he took a journey into the Crimea, and was captivated with the beauty of the country and its productions; the climate also appearing to be such as his health was supposed to require, he obtained from his munificent patroness not only permission to establish himself there, but a grant of a large and fertile estate, and a sum of 10,000 rubles to assist him in his outfit. He was thus enabled to build a little palace rather than a country house, in which a traveller from the north of Europe was sure to receive the most obliging hospitality, as Dr Clarke has made well known to the English reader. It appears, however, that the air was not altogether exempt from the miasmata, which are the causes of paludal fevers; and some other circumstances, besides the distance from all civilized society, seem to have made the old age of Pallas more cheerless than he had anticipated to find it, in the independence and tranquillity of his patriarchal establishment at Akmetshet (Simpheropol.) About ten years after the period of Dr Clarke's travels, he undertook a journey to Berlin to pay a visit to his brother, and died there in September 1811.
Linné the younger has given him a genus, Pallasia, in his Supplementum Plantarum; a compliment to which his unremitting labours in every department of natural history had amply entitled him. His collection of dried plants was purchased by Dr Clarke's fellow-traveller, Mr Cripps, and passed into the possession of Aylmer Bourke Lambert. The general character of Professor Pallas's acquirements appear to have been that of extent and variety, together with fidelity. He was not the author of any new theories or improved systems: and it has sometimes been observed, as by Murray in his System of Vegetables, that his descriptions were somewhat defective, from the omission of correct specific distinctions; but this omission is of such a nature as to affect a compiler or a book-maker much more than an actual student of natural history, who is studying for his own improvement only, and who is capable of entering into a detailed examination of the objects concerned. To such a detail the principal part of Professor Pallas's works have relation; and it is impossible to enumerate the whole of his memoirs without making a pretty extensive catalogue of the productions of the various kingdoms of nature.
1. His Dissertatio Inauguralis de Insectis viventibus intra Viventia, 4to, Leyden, 1760, containing a systematic account of intestinal worms, is said to have been previously published in another form at Göttingen a short time before he went to Leyden. 2. We find in the Philosophical Transactions for 1763, p. 62, a short note on the Cold observed at Berlin the preceding winter. 3. In the volume for 1776, p. 183, a Description of the Jaculator Fish, or Sciaena jaculatoria of the Indian Ocean, which catches insects by darting drops of water at them. This description is repeated in the Spicilegia Zoologica, fasc. 8. 4. Elenchus Zoophytorum, 8vo, Hague, 1766; containing nearly 300 species; Dutch by Roddaert, with figures, 8vo, Utrecht, 1768. 5. Miscellanea Zoologica, 4to, Hague, 1766; consisting of descriptions and dissections. 6. Spicilegia Zoologica, 4to, Berl. 1767-1780. Of this valuable collection of memoirs, intended for the description and illustration of new or little-known species of animals, there appeared in the whole fourteen fasciculi; some of them were published by Professor Martin during the author's absence in Siberia. We find, amongst other articles, an interesting account of the musk-deer, of various species of the antelope, and on the different varieties of sheep, both wild and tame; the latter has been published in English, On Russian and Tartar Sheep, 8vo, Edinburgh, 1794. 7. In the N. Act. Acad. Nat. Cur., vol. iii., p. 430, Phalaenurae ligni; an account of two species of moth, of which the females are wingless, and spontaneously fertile. 8. A variety of miscellaneous papers, by Pallas, appeared in the Stralsund Magazine, which began to be published at Berlin in 1767. They chiefly relate to the Winter Residence of Swallows, vol. i., p. 20; to Hydatids found in the abdomen of ruminant animals, and supposed to be a species of Tinea, p. 64; to the Birds of Passage of Siberia, p. 145, from Heller's Notes; to Firman's supposed discovery of the Origin of the Delemnites, p. 192; to Some Peculiarities of Insects, p. 225; to a Poison supposed to be prepared in Siberia from the Sitka or nut-hatch, p. 311; to the Elk or Moose-Deer, p. 382, from Heller's papers; and to the use of the Sphondylium in Kamtschatka, p. 411. 9. Collections relating to the Mongol Tribes, published in 1776, and showing that they are distinct from the Tartars. 10. Professor Pallas's contributions to the Memoirs of the Imperial Academy of St Petersburg are also very numerous, and on miscellaneous subjects. In the Novi Commentarii we find an account of the Tubularia Fungosa, vol. ii., observed near Woldemir; Lepus pauculus, and Fossil Bones of Siberia, vol. xiii.; Quadrupeds and Birds observed in 1769, vol. xiv. 1; Remains of Exotic Animals in Northern Asia, vol. xviii., especially the skulls of the rhinoceros and the buffalo; Tetrao areolaris, Epus hemionus, and Lacerta opoda, vol. xix.; the last also in Genesik. Joerboek, ii. In the Acta for 1777, ii., An Account of the Teeth of an Unknown Animal, like those which have been found in Canada; Observations from Camper's Letters, on a Myrmecophaga and a Didelphis, and Epus asiensis in the wild state. In the volume for 1779, ii., a Description of Plants peculiar to Siberia; Cyprea canescens, also in Lichtenberg's Magazine, ii. For 1780, part i., Galopithecus viensis, part ii., On the Variations of Animals, and Didelphis leachyura. For 1781, part i., Felis manul, a new Asiatic species of Felis; ii., on some species of Sorex. In the volume for 1783, New Species of Fishes; and 1784, On some New Marine Productions. 11. The Observations sur la Formation des Montagnes, et les Changemens arrivés au Globe, particulièrement à l'égard
Pallavicino. de l'Empire Russe, published separately, 4to, Petersburg, 1777, were also inserted in the Acta of the Academy for 1777, having been read at a public sitting before the King of Sweden. A translation of this discourse is inserted in Tooke's Russian Empire, and some remarks on it are found in the Journal de Physique, vol. xiii. 12. The most considerable of the separate publications of Pallas was the account of his travels, entitled Reisen durch verschiedene Provinzen des Russischen Reichs, 3 vols. 4to, Petersburg, 1771-3-6; French, 8vo, Paris, 1803; English, 2 vols. 4to, London, 1812; a work of the highest authority in geography and natural history. 13. It was in the course of these travels that Pallas observed in Siberia an insulated mass of native iron which he described in a paper addressed to the Royal Society of London, and printed in the Philosophical Transactions for 1776, p. 523; a substance which has become the subject of many discussions, from its resemblance to some of the specimens of well-ascertained aerolites; the author mentions also the remains of an unmineralized rhinoceros, which had been found in the same country. 14. In the Beschreibungen Naturforschenden Freunde, published at Berlin about 1777, we find a letter on the Acipenser ruthenus, or sturgeon, vol. ii., p. 532; and an Account of a Monstrous Horse, vol. iii., p. 226. 15. Some Mineralogical Observations, addressed to Bern, are published in the Böhmische Abhandlungen, vol. iii., p. 191. 16. In the Swedish Handlingar for 1778, we have the Alauda Mongolica, and the Sturnus Dananicus; the Anax glosans, in 1779. 17. Novæ species Gubernii, 4to, Erlangen, 1778. 18. Icones Insectorum, præsertim Rossianæ Siberianæ, 4to, Erlangen, 1781. 19. Enumeratio Plantarum Procopii a Demidoff, 8vo, Petersburg, 1781. 20. Another channel in which a number of Pallas's most valuable essays appeared is the work entitled Neue Nordische Beyträge, which he published at St Petersburg and Leipzig in 1781 and the following years. The most remarkable of the subjects of these are: A Great Exotic Animal found in Kasaan in the year 1776; on the Migration of the Water-Rat on the Volga, and Observations on Tenia, vol. i.; further Remarks on Tenia; on American Monkeys bred at St Petersburg; on the Ardea keliax; on the Culex lanus, sometimes fatal to cattle; on the Phalangium, or Scorpion Spider; and on Copper Island, in the Sea of Kamtschatka, vol. ii.; on Two Birds; and on the Labrador Stone, vol. iii.; on a Cross of the Black Wolf with the Dog; on a Mine; on the Oriental Turquois; and Mineralogical Novelties from Siberia, vol. v. 21. In the Physische Arbeiten of Vienna, we have a geological Essay on the Orogeny of Siberia, vol. i. 1. 22. Flora Rossica, f. vol. i., Petersburg, 1784; ii., 1788, published at the expense of the empress. 23. Tabulae Physicae et Topographicae de la Touride, 4to, Petersburg, 1795; German, in N. N. Beyträge, vii.; a work derived chiefly from the observations made by the author in his travels of 1792. 24. A Monography of the Astragalus is mentioned by some of his biographers. 25. He edited also Guldenstädt's Reisen durch Russland und in den Kaukasischen Gebirgen, ii., v., 4to, Petersburg, 1787-1791. 26. He also compiled and arranged the two first and most valuable of the four volumes of the Vocabularia Comparativa, 4to, Petersburg, 1787, in which he attempted to make some improvements in the Russian orthography.
(Coxe's Travels; Clarke's Travels; Tooke's Russian Empire; Halleri Bibliotheca Anatomica; Aikin's General Biography, vol. x., 4to, London, 1815; Chalmers' Biographical Dictionary, vol. xxiii., 8vo, London, 1815; Dryander, Catalogus Bibliothecæ Historico-Naturalis Josephi Banks, Bart.) (x. y.)