. since I last saw it twelve years since. M. de Notaris; 
480 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 
not yet commenced. "The herbarium is a general one; but 
the great bulk consists of Sicilian plants in fine and nume- 
rous specimens, neatly tied in bundles, and most largely 
housed in the great room devoted to it. Professor Tineo, 
the director, has been very active in the investigation of the 
flora of the island, and published several short papers des- 
cribing the new forms he has found. But by far the best set 
of Sicilian plants in Palermo, for number and beauty of 
specimens, is that of M. Todaro, a young advocate who 
devotes his leisure hours to botany, and has published some 
carefully executed papers on Sicilian Orchidee, and some 
other plants. The Professor of Zoology, Dr. Calcara, has 
also a small herbarium, chiefly collected during his zoolo- 
gical excursions. 
The Professor of Botany, at the University of Catania, is 
a Benedictine monk, the Padre Tornabene, who has investi- 
gated well the botany of the neighbouring Mount Etna, and 
is forming a botanical garden and herbarium for the Univer- 
sity. I had not time to go on to Syracuse, where I under- 
stand a medical man, M. Cassia, is zealous in the pursuit of 
botany. t n 
Rome, since the death of Mauri, affords but very little 5 
the way of botany. The accounts given me of the botanic 
garden were so very bad, that I would not waste time ™ 
finding it out; and I could not hear of a single botanist, save 
a lady, the Countess Fiorini-Mazzanti, who has indeed dis- 
tinguished herself by a very careful search of the Roman 
ruins, from whence she has collected and determined a herba- E 
. rium of about three hundred species, and by her investiga- 
. tion of the mosses of the country, which she has published a 
in a Latin pamphlet under the title of “Bryologia Ro - 
. Lucca boasts of a botanical garden and profess r of 
a botany; but their fame did not reach me till I had left the pt 
_ place far behind me. Genoa has made consi derable prc pm 
T fessor of botany, and director of the garden, author of ^ — : ; 
