Ftench National Insiltute, 389 



probable that it belonged to the class of gallinacei, and the 

 common quail is the modern species whicli it resembles. 



M. Sage has given us the description of some carpolites, 

 or petrified fruits. One of them was the kernel of a nut 

 becoa.e calcareous, and found at Lous-le-Saulnier: another 

 seemed to have been the fruit of a wild nutmeg-tree, which 

 grew at Madagascar and in some of the Moluccas ; its 

 substance was also calcareous: the third seemed to have be- 

 Jonged to something resembling the durion of India; it was 

 transformed into jasper. To these new facts he subjoins some 

 of the remarks which had been already made on carpolites,, 

 and conchides that the petrified fruits found in our climate 

 are exotics. He also enters into some chemical details, by 

 means of which he explains how these petrifactions look 

 place. 



BOTANr. 



Order and method will always be two objects of the first 

 importance in natural history, and particularly in botany: 

 they serve at one and the same time to establish the rela- 

 tions which bodies have with each other, and to guide the 

 observer in the midst of the innumerable productions of 

 nature. The most celebrated naturalists have made it the 

 particular object of their studies ; and the knowledge which 

 the real science of the various systems requires^ could never 

 have been embraced but for them. / 



M. Jussieu, who has so just a title to be considered as the 

 legislator of botany, has formed a new order of plants under 

 the name of Monimise : the genera of which it is composed 

 are, the ruizia, the monimia^ the ambora, and perhaps the 

 cUrosma, the pavofiia, and the atherosperma. 'I'his or- 

 der ouglit to be placed immediately before the family of the 

 Utriceae; but after the Monimias M. Jussieu places the caly- 

 cantkus, heretofore united to the Rosaceie ; he considers it 

 as the type of a new order, which will serve as a stage be- 

 tween the Monimise and the Utricese. 



M. Palisot Beauvois has proceeded wiih his inquiries 

 into the order of Gramineae. He has studied their organs 

 of fruciification more exactly than any person had done 

 before him ; has founded on the organization ol" each 

 of the parts of these organs the characters which ought to 

 distinguish them from each other, and obiaiiied the means 

 of divuling the different species of this order into genera, 

 much more natural than those which had been hitherto 

 adopted. 



M. Lal)illardiere has* made us acquainted with a new 

 B b 3 pi rait 



