Page:Russian Realities and Problems - ed. James Duff (1917).djvu/198

 tried to complete their observation by experiment. This conception, however, took time to develop: the views of Lomonosov on the physical and chemical processes by means of which the origin of different minerals could be explained (e.g., rock-salt, fossil coal and amber), on the natural uniformity of crystals, and on the phenomena of metamorphism, were too premature to be followed up by Russian students: even their foreign masters had then no clear ideas on these subjects, but confined themselves mostly to observation, and their Russian pupils began to practise it with some success. An assistant of the self-denying Gmelin-Krasheninnikov, for instance, produced a substantial botanical survey of Kamtshatka; Lepechin a collaborator of the learned Pallas, the framer of Russian "zoography" and palaeontology, published an accurate description of the natural wealth and folk-roads of the northern provinces of the Empire; and some years later Osereshkovsky and Zuev recorded valuable observations made during travels in Russia.

This descriptive tendency assumed by degrees a more scientific and precise character: it is conspicuous in the first half of the 19th century, for instance, in the work of Severgin and Koksharov on Russian mineralogy, of Ledebour and Turchaninov on Russian flora, and of Brandt and Kutorga on Russian fauna.

In the second half of the century some general principles were stated by Russianised or Russian men of science and could be confirmed by experiment: and