In compliance with your request to communicate to you what I can find concerning the old sepulchres seen in the southern parts of Russia and in Siberia, I send you some reasons which render it probable that they are all the work of one and the same nation, however opposite a judgment those may pass who have bestowed on them only a cursory attention. Every thing that relates to the customs of the various societies mankind have formed is a proper subject of research to the inquisitive mind. The repositories of the dead have in all ages been objects of regard; at first as honourable testimonies of human sentiment and in aftertimes as a ground of investication into the manners and opinions of men.