148 Natural- Historical Collections. 



" About this time, the Institute had committed an act of extraordinary courage; 

 in venturing to ask permission of Buonaparte to award a prize medal to Sir H. 

 pavy, for his admirable galvanic experiments, and was still in amaze at its own 

 heroism. Consent was obtained; but the soreness of national defeat rankled 

 deeply within. 'W'^hen the First Consul was apprised that the greatest of hi» 

 comparative anatomists had attended a course of lectures by Dr. Gall, he broke 

 out as furiously as he had done against Lord Whitworth ; and at his levee he 

 rated the wise men of his land for allowing themselves to be taught chemistry by 

 an Englishman, and anatomy by a German ; sat verbum. The wary citizen altered 

 his language. A commission was named by the Institute to report upon the la- 

 bours of Drs. Gall and Spurzheim ; M. Cuvier drew up the report. In this he 

 used his efforts, not to proclaim the truth, but to diminish the merits of the 

 learned Germans. Whenever he could find the most distant similarity between 

 the slightest point of their mode of operating, and any thing ever done before, he 

 dwelt upon it with peculiar pleasure ; and lightly touched upon what was really 

 new. He even affected to excuse the Institute for having taken the subject into ;. 

 consideration at all, saying that the anatomical researches were entirely distinct ;, 

 from the physiology of the brain, and the doctrine of mental manifestations. Of 

 this part of the subject Buonaparte, and not without cause, had declared his re-^ 

 probation ; and M. Cuvier was too great a lover of liberty not to submit his opi-, 

 riion to that of his Consul. His assertion, too, that the anatomy of the braia , 

 had nothing to say to its mental influence, he knew to be in direct opposition 

 to fact ; but even the meagre credit which he did dare to allow to the new mode 

 of dissection, he wished to dilute with as much bitterness as he could. So 

 unjust and unsatisfactory, so lame and mutilated did the whole report appear, 

 that the authors of the new method published an answer, in which they ac- 

 cused the commissaries of not having repeated their experiments. Such was 

 the reception which the science, that we (phrenologists) now see spreading 

 over the globe, met with from the Academy of the Great Nation.— Foreign 

 Quarterly Review. 



On the Shamrock of Ireland — Mr. Bicheno, on the 16th March last, read a 

 paper before the Linnasan Society of London, " on the plant intended by the 

 Shamrock of Ireland," in which he attempted to prove, by botanical, historical, and 

 ethnological evidence, that the original plant was not the white clover, which is 

 now employed as the national emblem. He stated, that it would seem a condition 

 at least suitable, if not necessary, to a national emblem, that it should be some- 

 thing familiar to the people, — and familiar, too, at that season when the national 

 feast is celebrated. Thus, the Welsh have given the leek to St. David, being a 

 favourite oleraceous herb, and the only green thing they could find on the 1st of 

 March ; the Scotch, on the other hand, whose feast is in the autumn, have 

 adopted the thistle. The white clover is not fully expanded on St. Patrick's day, 

 and wild specimens of it could hardly be obtained at this season. Besides, it was 

 probably, nay almost certainly, a plant of uncommon occurrence in Ireland during 

 its early history, having been introduced into that country in the middle of the 

 seventeenth century, and made common by cultivation. He then referred to se- 

 veral old authors, to prove that tlie shamrock was eaten by the Irish ; and to one 

 who went over to Ireland in the sixteenth century, who says it was eaten, and was 

 a.sowr plant. The name also of shamrock is common to several trefoils, both in 

 the Irish and Gaelic languages. Now the clover could not have been eaten, and 

 it is not sour. Taking, therefore, all the conditions requisite, they are only found 

 in the wood-sorrel, oxalis acetosella. It is an early spring plant ; it was and is 

 abundant in Ireland ; it is a trefoil ; it is called sham-rog by the old herbalists, 

 and it is sour ; while its beauty might well entitle it to the distinction of being 

 the national emblem. The substitution of one for the other has been occasioned 

 by cultivation, whicli made the wood-sorrel less plentiful, and the Dutch clovey 

 abundant — Lit. Gazette. 



