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summer temperature which a two day’s journey so easily affects. The 
geology of the early portion of the road was net very varied and of 
little interest ; after passing Marseilles, however, the district claimed more 
attention from the geologist. Shut in as Mentone is bya fine range of 
mountains of Jurassic age, reaching to 4,500 feet, with only a narrow 
breadth of land between them and the sea, the physical characters of the 
place must necessarily greatly influence its botany and natural history. 
The subject of the evening’s communication, i.e, ‘ Reminiscences of 
Natural History and Geology of Mentone,’ was then at once entered upon. 
The contrast in the growth of the olive trees—but stunted shrubs in the 
earlier portion of the journey ; in this sheltered bay, fine luxuriant trees, 
some of them supposed to be as old as the Roman period—the rich orange 
groves, and the extreme variety of the botany, the latter so well worked 
out by Mr. Moggeridge—were touched upon. Mr. Moore dwelt long upon 
the many interesting facts connected with the zoology of the place. The 
absence of small birds, accounted for by the perpetual raid carried on 
against them by the native gunners; the abundance of reptiles and of 
insect life ; the startling noises of the tree frogs ; the persevering industry 
of the Scarabzeus, a large flat beetle, in rolling or pushing her earth ball to 
a suitable place, wherein to deposit her eggs ; the harvest ants, Adta 
barbara and A. structor, and their power of stopping the germination of 
the various seeds laid up in their granaries for winter use; the curious 
attempts at lassoing a certain ant by the small hunting spider ; and the 
extraordinary instinct, if not something higher, of the trap-door spiders, 
familiar to the readers of Mr. Moggeridge’s book, especially the Nemesia 
meridionalis, which for greater security, not only forms an outer, but an 
inner door to its tube excavated in the earth, and when pursued draws this 
second door across that portion of the tube in which it has taken refuge, 
and by placing its back against it firmly resists any attempt to open 
it. Before giving a description of the skeleton of Mentone, Mr. Moore 
repeated an anecdote relating to a dog, which the owner and landlord 
of the Victoria Hotel had presented to a lady leaving the hotel on her 
homeward journey to Vienna, and which, after six weeks’ absence, 
returned one day to the hotel door, having traversed a distance of 600 
miles. From the exhaustion of the journey the poor animal died within 
twenty-four hours after its arrival. With regard to the discovery of 
the skeleton, or rather the two skeletons (for a second has since been 
found), Mr. Moore gave a minute description, as he was fortunate enough 
to see it himself before it was removed by the discoverer, Dr. Riviere, to 
Paris. In the limestone range of hills just outside the French frontier are 
