Natural History in Foreign Countries.' 471 



$imeh is conspicuously named in French, and after Linnseus or some more 

 recent author. There are few Mammalia, but a considerable collection 

 of birds, the greater part prepared and mounted by the professor himself. All 

 the birds of the department of the Moselle, and as many as possible of those 

 which are indigenous to France, are contained in this collection ; and as 

 owls and the falcon family are much more common on the Continent than 

 in Britain, these birds make the most conspicuous appearance. There is one 

 large sea eagle which was shot in the neighbourhood ; a bird which one 

 would not have expected so far in the interior. The Flora of the environs of 

 Metz is arranged according to the natural system ; each specimen attached 

 by narrow slips of paper to the third page of a folio leaf; the class, order, 

 family, tribe, name, locality, &c., being inserted on the first page, under 

 printed heads or titles, the last of which is " General Remarks." Unfor- 

 tunately, the Professor being out of town, we could not ascertain the 

 number of families, species, or rare plants ; but we were assured gene- 

 rally by M. Clerc, the sub-librarian (whose grandfather, a native of Scot- 

 land, accompanied King James to France and settled there), that it was 

 rich. M. Clerc is much attached to agriculture and gardening, and was 

 a particular friend of the late JBaron Tschoudy, of this neighbourhood, 

 the inventor of the Greffe herbac^e. There are a magnificent specimen of 

 j9oletus ramosus, and a very curious fragment of the trunk of a beech tree, 

 which the Professor discovered in the street when passing by a man who 

 was sawing up some fire-wood. This fragment is a portion separated longi- 

 tudinally from a cross section of a tree, which may have been 18 in. or 2 ft. 

 in diameter, and from fifty to sixty years of age. At the age of fifty years, 

 some person had cut in the bark, and through the liber and alburnum, the 

 form of a cross, about a foot long, and had, by some means or other, black- 

 ened or oxidised (or probably the weather might have effected this) the 

 denuded surface which formed the cross. The tree had been felled about 

 ten years afterwards, and happened to be split by the wood-cutter, exactly 

 at the layer where the cross was formed j the fragment now displayed a black 

 cross on the wood or interior side, and a corresponding cross on the bark 

 side of the section, though the two are three inches apart from each other. 

 On counting the layers of wood between the internal and external cross, it 

 appears that the former had remained two or three years uncovered, be- 

 cause two or three layers are lost there ; but eight between the inner cross 

 and the bark are very distinct. In the effort of nature to cover the cross, 

 a portion of bark, which had formed the edges of the wound, had been com- 

 pletely enclosed and covered with wood, and still remains sound, but not 

 lignified. This fragment is not described as being particularly important, 

 in a physiological point of view, but still it shows that the accretions to a 

 timber tree are added from without, and that bark cannot be changed into 

 wood, any more than the skin of an animal can be turned into flesh. There 

 is a very complete collection of specimens of timber of all the trees which 

 the late Baron Tschoudy knew, and proved would bear the open air in the 

 department of- the Moselle ; indeed the greater part of the specimens were 

 taken by M. Hollandre from trees planted by the Baron; but we must 

 reserve further particulars respecting this museum, and other subjects con- 

 nected with Natural History at Metz, till we can seee Professor Hollandre, 

 the plantations of the late Baron Tschoudy, and the Natural History Cabi- 

 net of M. Meslier de Rocan. 



The Botanic Garden here is small, but not without interest. It was for- 

 merly the garden of a convent of Capuchins, whose church now forms a 

 very good orangery, and contains 140 large handsome trees, some of them 

 20 ft. high, and a Magnolia grandiflora exceeding that height, and finely 

 furnished with branches and leaves. This change took place about twenty- 

 eight years ago, at which time the present curator, M. Coutie, a native ot 

 Strasburg, who has been three years in Paris, and six years in England, 



