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Although largely developed in Italy, where nearly all the churches are built of, it, 
it is also found everywhere, where limestone rocks exist, more or less. 
With this brief survey of the process of soil-formation by the mineral or 
inorganic kingdom, we must be content and now take a glance at the share taken 
by the organic kingdom. 
We must suppose a soil of mineral constituents, capable of supporting plant 
life, to have been formed, and to have become dry land. On this, ere long, the 
seeds of plants wafted by the wind, or dropped by birds, will find a resting place, 
take root, flourish and decay, and leave their substance to be again returned to the 
soil ; but they will also shed abroad their seeds and in time the whole surface of 
the ground will be covered with some sort of vegetation; on this vegetation 
animals will come and feed, and leave their feces, and when they die their carcasses 
to enrich the soil, the bones of animals being a valuable manure. This process 
going on for a long continuance of time will give rise to the humus or vegetable 
mould found in all agricultural soils. This humus is always much increased by 
tillage and manuring, and is always most plentiful in soils which have been long 
under cultivation. 
If again from any geological cause the soil is depressed below the water, or 
has not yet risen above the water, as swamps and bogs, the vegetation, if any exist, 
which will always be of an aquatic kind, when it dies down, will be preserved by 
the water from decay for a very long period, and by accumulations of vegetable 
matter of this description peaty soils are formed. 
These formations are well seen in the North of Ireland and South of 
Scotland. I may mention here that this peaty soil is the commencement of the 
formation of coal; the vegetable or organic matter is gradually replaced by 
mineral. 
Mr. Rankin promised at a future meeting to read as a sequel to this paper, 
another on the composition and character of the different varieties of soils. 
NOTE ON CHILOCORUS RENIPUSTULATUS, 
By T. A. Cuapman, M.D. 
These notes are a very poor apology for a complete history of the beetle 
they refer to, but I submit them to the club as not being devoid of interest, whilst 
it is doubtful whether I shall ever be able to render them more complete. 
The subject of these notes is a small beetle of the family Coccinellide 
(the Lady-bird.) It must take rank among useful insects, as indeed all the 
Coceinellide do. It preys upon an enemy of the ash as grown for hop-poles, and 
is thus a friend to the hop grower. The hop itself has at least three species of 
Lady-birds that prey upon the aphides which so frequently infest it, so that no 
