A FINE COPY. Pallas, who was born in Berlin in 1741 and died there in 1811, was made a member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences in 1768, and in his capacity as naturalist took charge of the scientific expedition whose initial task was to make astronomical observations in Siberia. Six years of travel took him as far as the Chinese border in the east and the Caucasus in the south before he returned to the capital on 30 July 1774. His explorations, discoveries and extraordinary hardships were documented in the above work, first published in St. Petersburg, 1771-76.