MISCELLANEOUS COMMUNICATIONS. 161 



greatly the friction and assists the rapidity of the wood's descent. The logs 

 are then discharged, and descend with the quickness of lightning into the 

 depth below, passing in a few minutes over a distance of several miles. The 

 effect of such a discharge is much heightened when the slide terminates on 

 the brow of a precipice overlooking, a lake. The mountains around re-echo 

 with a report like that of thunder : vast trees, hurled forth with the ease of 

 a bundle of sticks, clear half the width of the lake in their leap ; and, de- 

 scending with a splash into its waters, ruffle the surface far and wide, and 

 strew it, as it were, with the fragments of a wreck. The duties of a wood- 

 man do not end when he has thus discharged the wood ; many logs and stems 

 are arrested in their progress by some projecting mass of rock or tuft of 

 bushes, and may be seen adhering to the sides of the ravine or precipice, 

 looking, at a distance, like straws scattered over the hill-side. The woodman 

 must disengage these, and see them fairly and prosperously on their way. 

 At times, where the timber falls from a great height, the hardy woodman is let 

 down by a cord, axe in hand, in the face of a precipice or cataract, to clear 

 away all obstructions. In like manner he must push off and set afloat the 

 timber which runs aground, or is stranded in the bed of the river. For 

 the purpose of collecting the swimming wood, a species of barrier or grating 

 of wood is erected across the rivers, at the entrance of the great valleys, or 

 in the neighbourhood of the salt-pans and charcoal furnaces. It is here ar- 

 rested and sorted, according to its quality, by the persons to whom it belongs. 

 Different proprietors distinguish the wood belonging to each of them by cut- 

 ting the logs of a particular length, so that, even when several owners dis- 

 charge their timber into the river at the same time, it is easily sorted and ap- 

 propriated. A tax of a certain sum upon every stack of wood, is paid for the 

 use of the river and the services of the woodmen. In some of the remote 

 forests trees of huge dimensions may be met with, giants of the vegetable 

 creation. A Larch which stood near Matsch, in the Vintsehgan, was called 

 " The King of the Larches," since seven men could scarcely surround its 

 trunk with outstretched arms. A Fir (Pinus piceaj growing on the Mar- 

 tinsberg, in the forest-district of Zerl, measured five feet in diameter at nine 

 feet from the ground, and at a height of between ninety and ninety-five feet 

 from the ground still retained a diameter of between eight and nine inches. 

 The species of Fir called by naturalists Pinus cembra, which grows only on 

 the limits of vegetation on the borders of glaciers and everlasting snow, is 

 much pi-ized in the Tyrol, as well as in Switzerland, for the facility with 

 which it is cut in figures, bowls, spoons, and other utensils and toys. It is 

 out of this wood that the inhabitants of the Grodnerthal carve the crucifixes 

 which are so abundantly dispersed in the Tyrol, and the pretty toys of 

 Berchtesgaden are made of the same material — Idem. 



The Cryptogamous Plants Mr. W. A. Leighton, of Shrewsbury, 



has published a " Catalogue of the Cellularcs, or Flowerless Plants of Great 

 Britain, or those included in the Linnean Class, Cryptogamia ; compiled from 

 Sir W. J. Hooker's English Flora, Sir J. E. Smith's English Flora, Mackay's 

 Flora Hibernica, Henslow's Catalogue of British Plants, and other sources." 

 Mr. L. is of o|)inion that the increased and increasing study of the crypto- 

 gamic tribes affords a sufficient apology for the ])ublication of a Catalogue 

 which has for its sole object the facilitating an interchange of specimens, as 

 well as to form a convenient index to those already in the herbarium ; and, 



VOL. VM.j NO. XXI. X 



