210 List of Patents. 



to the letter. " Buffon," says he, " has been called the painter of 

 nature ; but St Pierre has a title to be accounted her most ardent 

 admirer. He dwells on her charms with unceasing transport, and 

 no one is more successful in inspiring others with a kindred feeling.- 

 His pages are full of life and eloquence, because he felt himself what 

 he told to others. Like Armida, he might be said to have constructed 

 an enchanted palace, in which the spectator forgets, for a season, the 

 foibles, the passions, and the vexations of his species." 



" St Pierre," says Humboldt, " knew how to paint nature : not 

 because he had studied it scientifically, but because he felt it in all 

 it« harmonious analogies of forms, colours, and interior powers." — - 

 Pers. Narrative, v., 47. " It was in a little garret, in the new 

 street of St Etienne du Mont," says St Pierre, '* where I resided 

 four years, in the midst of physical and domestic afflictions, that I 

 arranged my ' Studies of Nature.' But there I enjoyed the most 

 exquisite pleasures of my life, amid profound solitude and an enchant- 

 ing horizon. I here put the finishing hand, and there I published 

 them."" — Charles Bucke, on the Beauties, and Harmonies and Sub- 

 limities of Nature, vol. i., 2d edit. p. 447. 



15. Whale and Shark Fishing in Faroe. — Extract of a Letter 

 from Thorshavn, Faroe Islands, September 1. 1845. — " This sum- 

 mer we have already killed about 2500 Caaing whales (Delphinus 

 melas). We have this year tried a new kind of fishery. In my last 

 letter I mentioned Mr Skibsted's experiment on taking sharks ; he 



« got above 250, from the livers of which he obtained about 102 

 barrels, or 3060 gallons of clear oil, and 40 barrels of thick oil, some 

 of which, together with bones and blubber of the whales, and some 

 guano, has been exported to Lynn, in Norfolk." 



Sharks appear to have lately become much more numerous in 

 Faroe, as they have also in other parts of the North Seas, especially - 

 on the coast of Norway. — Communicated by W. C. Trevelyan^ Esq. 



16. Professor Agassiz on the Brain of Fishes. — At the meetings 

 of the Helvetic Society, Professor Agassiz gave an account of his 

 investigations on the encephalon of fishes. The most striking fact 

 on which he insisted, is that of the persistence of the forms of the - 

 brain in the diff'erent families ; forms on which, contrary to the 

 general belief, the instinct or the habits of the different species 

 exercise no influence whatever. The consequence of this observa- 

 tion is, that the brain is not the expression of the propensities of ' 

 the species, but of a particular mode of organization of the ani- 

 mals . — Bibliotheque Universelle. 



List of Patents granted for Scotland from 23d September to 

 18th Dece7nber 1845. 



1. To Charles Murland, of Castlewellan, in the county of Down and 

 kingdom, of Ireland, flax-spinner, and Edward Lawson of Leeds, in the 



