388 Scientific Intelligence— Botany and Zoology. 
and send to the Academy, specimens of all the species whose limits he 
may determine, and also specimens of all the species taken from the 
middle, and from the two limits of their region ; because, such specimens 
would be necessary for the proper determination of species, and of the 
differences which may be presented by them in the different situations 
where they grow. 
8. On solid Vegetable Oils. —Linnaan Society, June 18. The Bishop 
of Norwich in the ehair.—A paper was read by Mr E. Solly on the 
solid vegetable oils. These oils were characterised by possessing stearine, 
the solid principle of all oils, in such quantity as to render them solid at 
the ordinary temperature of the atmosphere. They were of the con- 
sistence of animal fats, and in many instances were used as substitutes for 
butter, as articles of diet. There was some difficulty in distinguishing 
these oils from wax, but the latter was produced in much less quantities. 
The various plants yielding solid oils were pointed out, with the modes 
of obtaining the oils, and the uses to which they were subservient in the 
various parts of the world. Few or no British plants yield solid oils. 
The plants yielding butter, tallow, and solid oils, which were mentioned, 
are as follows :—Theobroma Cacao, chocolate-nut tree, yielding Cacao 
butter; Vateria Indica, producing a solid semicrystalline fat, used for 
various purposes in India, where the tree is called Tallow-tree ; Penta- 
desma butyracea, the Butter or Tallow Tree of Sierra Leone. Several 
species of plants belonging to the natural order Lauracex, as Lawrus No- 
bilis, Tetranthera sebifera or Litsea sebifera, Lawrus cinmamomum, &e., 
yield solid oils, in addition to their volatile fluid oils. The Myristica 
moschata, the common Nutmeg, with the M. sebifera, both yield a solid 
oil, sometimes called nutmeg butter; Bassia butyracea, the Mahva or 
Madhucea-tree, gives out a kind of butter whieh is used in India. The 
Butter-tree of Mungo Park, found in Africa, is the Bassia Parkii of some 
writers, though others have doubted if the Butter-tree of Park is a Bassia 
at all. The butter is also called Shoa butter, and specimens were exhi- 
bited, procured by Dr Stanger during the late Niger expedition. Several 
palms yield solid oils; the principal of these are the Cocos nucifera, 
cocoa-nut tree, and the Elis Guineensis ; the former yields the cocoa- 
nut oil and butter, the latter the palm oil of commerce. All the 
fruits, however, of Palmacez are capable of yielding more or less solid 
oil, and many other species than those named yield the palm oil of 
commerce. 
9. On the Ibis —According to Pliny, the Ibis freed Egypt from ser- 
pents. Herodotus had previously expressed the same opinion; but doubts 
have been raised in modern times as to these birds possessing the power 
of destroying serpents. These doubts were founded on the organisation 
of the beak, the length and delicacy of which appeared but little adapted 
to enable the birds to contend with animals possessed of a certain de- 
gree of strength, however small they may be supposed to be. 
The black Ibis, one of the two species the Egyptians possessed, is 
pretty widely spread in Southern Algeria, where the French troops have 
seen them flying in flocks like our crows. M. Guyon states, that having 
had occasion to examine an individual killed in the Ourancenis (a great 
mass of mountains in Algeria beyond Chelif), he found in its crop three 
kinds of insects quite entire, which formed three very distinct packets, 
