New Zealand Flax cultivated with Success in France. 315 
Messrs. Kapoutanaki, of Smyrna, are preparing for publica- 
eation a complete System of Universal Geography in modern 
Greek. That part which relates to the Ottoman Empire will be 
more copious than in any other publication known in Europe. 
Dr. Wuttig, professor of chemistry and mineralogy in the 
university of Kasan in Russia, has announced the discovery of 
‘a new mineral, to which he has given the name of miaszito. 
According to his analysis, it is a compound of carbonate of lime 
and carbonate of strontian; it may therefore be only a variety 
of the mineral arragonite discovered by professor Stromeger. 
Chevalier Cicognora, President of the Atheneum of Venice, 
has published the Prospectus of his History of Sculpture from its 
revival in Italy to the present time, in order to form a Supple- 
‘ment to the works of Winckelman and M. Leroux d’Agincourt. 
The work will be divided into six books. The first will relate to 
the origin of the art. The second will contain the history of 
those temples, ancient aud modern, which are distinguished by 
ornaments of sculpture. And in the four subsequent the author 
will give the history of sculpture properly so called, divided into 
five periods: Ist, from Nicolo Pisano to Donatello ; 2d, from Do- 
natello to Michael Angelo; 3d, from Michael Angelo to Bernini; 
4th, from Bernini to Canova; and 5th, to the present day. 
NEW ZEALAND FLAX CULTIVATED WITH SUCCESS IN FRANCE. 
In a letter from M. Faujas St. Fond to M. Thouin,. inserted in 
the Annales du Museum d’ Histoire Naturelle, he announces 
that the Phormium tenax, or New Zealand flax, which had _ hi- 
therto never flowered in Europe, had given out flowers in the 
garden of M, Freycinet, the father of two officers who were in 
Capt. Baudin’s expedition. 
“°The Phormium tenax,’’.M. Faujas St. Fond adds, * was 
cultivated in the garden of M. Freycinet and in my own. We 
took care to cover it in winter; but as we were at first anxious 
to multiply our plants, we cut off shoots every vear, which greatly 
impoverished the principal plants, and of course interrupted their 
flowering. At length, when we became anxious to see them flower, 
we reserved about a tenth, and left them to themselves. 
“* These plants soon increased prodigiously, and on the 10th of 
May (1813) M. Freycinet informed me that a very. vigorous 
flower-stalk was shooting out fromthe centre of one of his 
strongest plants. Seven days afterwards this stalk was three 
feet high: on the 31st it was five feet six inches, and on the 
7th of June six feet teninches. Onthe 14th, its term of greatest 
: increase, 
