Botany. — Meteorology. 93 



gained the mountain and difappeared. We have made for 

 it a fmall drefs of grey cloth, by which it feems to be much 

 embarrafled, and which it does not know how to get rid of. 

 We fufFered it to go out into the garden, but it endeavoured 

 to efcape, and attempted to break one of the bars of the gate, 

 which is of lattice-work. It does not fpcak. When offered 

 potatoes, it takes as many as its pretty little hands can con- 

 tain. If they are boiled (for it prefers them fo) it peels 

 them, and eats them like an ape. It laughs in a very agree- 

 able manner, and, when robbed of i'.s potatoes, fends forth a 

 ftirill crv. Conftans imagined that it was deaf, but we have 

 convinced ourfelves of the contrary; at moft, it is only dull 

 of hearing." 



BOTANr. 



C. Brouffonet, the French vice-conful at Mogador on the 

 coaft of Barbary, having been obliged to abandon his fitua- 

 tion on account of the bad treatment he experienced and the 

 ravages occafioned by the plague, and to retire to the Ca- 

 naries, has employed his lelfure time in examining the foil 

 and produftions of thefe iflands, of which he propofes to 

 publifh a natural hiftory. In one of the ifles he found the 

 glacial mefcmhrianthemum criflallinum Linn, cultivated on a 

 laro-e fcale by the inhabitants, to whom it furnifhes abun- 

 dance of foda. Brouflbnet obferved in the ifland of Tene- 

 rlffe eight kinds of laurel, feveral of which appear to be new. 



METEOROLOGY. 



** On the nth inftant there was a very curious phenome- 

 non here; an incefifant fliooting of the liars from ii o'clock 

 at night till day-light the next morning, defcribed by fome 

 as a lliower of fire ; it was, indeed, magnificently awful." 



" Barbadoes, Nov. 24, 1799 " 



On the 6Lh of December a curious phenomenon was ob- 

 ferved at Aolta. At ten in the morning, two parhelia, or 

 mock funs, were feen, of the fame fize as the real fun, but 

 fomewhat paler. One of them had a long white tail, in fliape 

 rpfenibling a fvvord. An hour afterwards, the three funs 

 formed a femicirclc, the real one being in the middle. This 

 feniicircle fooi> changed into feveral others, and at length fix 



of 



