Abstract
AMONG the Poles whose scientific work was conducted in and for Russia was Benedict Dybowski, a sketch of whose life is given by Dr. J. Borucki in the first issue of Polish Science and Learning (June, 1942: Oxford University Press. 2s. 6d.). Dybowski was born at Minsk in 1833. As a schoolboy he kept various animals and was apparently the first to observe the metamorphosis of Petromyzon. He studied medicine and biology at Dorpat (1856),. Breslau (1857) and Berlin (1860), where he published minor researches, for example, on artificial insemination of bees. At Dorpat again, in 1861, he worked on a monograph of the fishes of the Baltic lands. However, he was arrested for his political beliefs, and though the sentence of deportation was at first revoked, he was sent to Siberia after the 1863 insurrection. Here he began by exploring the forest and steppe around Czyta. Later, at Kultuk, he made long journeys to the Saya Mountains and to Chamar, developing a vast philanthropic medical service among the native population, so that the governor, J. G. Skolkow, invited him to join an expedition to the tributaries of the Amur and Ussuri Rivers, penetrating as fai ; as the Pacific. They had scanty means, having to make their own boats. Nevertheless, Dybowski sent extensive collections to European museums and developed a view that each region showed a special structure of animal life in close correspondence with the environment. He discovered a number of hitherto unrecorded species, including a deer on the Ussuri, and noted the differences between Siberian and Bengal tigers. The birds he collected provided the basis for Taczanowski's critical “Review of Siberian Ornithological Fauna”.
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Benedict Dybowski. Nature 150, 149–150 (1942). https://doi.org/10.1038/150149c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/150149c0
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