Bibliographical Notices. 363 
The Nicotiana nana, Lindl. Bot. Reg. tab. 833, referred by 
Don to his section Polydicla, cannot belong to this genus, as its 
ovarium is bilocular, and as it corresponds in few respects. The 
plant has certainly nothing of the habit of a Nicotiana, and it is 
difficult, in the absence of a satisfactory specimen, to determine 
to what genus it should be referred. 
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES. 
Antiquités Celtiques et Antédiluviennes ; Mémoire sur U Industrie pri- 
mitive et les Arts a leur origine, avec 80 planches représentant 1600 
figures. Paris, 1849. 
Tuts very curious and interesting work is the result of the labours 
and researches of a gentleman of independent fortune, and of taste, 
science and public spirit, residing at Abbeville. He has been from the 
first commencement of the Société d’Emulation in that city its ac- 
tive, liberal, and munificent President. During the last ten years he 
has gone to the expense of ascertaining what remains of primitive 
art could be discovered underneath the beds of peat, gravel and 
other materials, which cover the bottom of his own valley, that of 
the river Somme, and he has extended his inquiries also into the 
valley of the Seine. The deposits which he has turned over have not 
been simply alluvial in the strict geological sense of the word, but 
have also presented those appearances, especially in their fossil con- 
tents, which have always been considered as distinctive of diluvium. 
In these deposits to a great extent and in numerous instances 
M. Boucher de Perthes has found articles of bone, horn and flint, 
evidently fashioned by human labour, and intended to serve the 
purposes of arms, tools, utensils and symbols. He has discovered 
these objects both in the midst of and several metres below the dé- 
bris of elephants, mastodons, saurians, and other extinct species, 
specimens of which, presented by him, are exhibited in the Museum 
of Natural History at Paris. Collections of the rudely shaped, but 
indisputably artificial objects so situated may be seen in the museums 
at Abbeville and Amiens; and in addition to his ample relations of 
his researches, the author has given outline figures of many hundreds 
of them in the numerous plates which illustrate his volume. Such 
is the importance attached to his labours by the best judges in his 
own country, that the Académie des Sciences has at his request ap- 
pointed MM. S. Cordier, Dufrénoy, and Elie de Beaumont as a com- 
mission to investigate the subject in its relation to geology, and the 
Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres has named another com- 
mission, including MM. Jomard and Raoul-Rochette, to examine the 
matter as archeologists (pp. v, vi, x). 
The subject of this remarkable volume is one, in the treatment of 
which archeology and geology join hands. It consequently em- 
braces a great variety of considerations bearing upon history, phy- 
siology, and other branches of science. The numerous questions 
