. 
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be5352 
Miscellanies. 187 
; Inow refer to. About eighteen months since, making some experiments 
on iron ore, I obtained a white precipitate,* so near resembling that from 
the sand, that I was led to suspect my mistake. I now undertook another 
and more minute examination of the sand. I obtained the same white 
precipitate, and submitted it to sublimation, but found no mercury, but 
every appearance of iron. I have examined the sand with the magnet 
and glasses. The black I think is a rich iron ore, highly magnetic; the 
red and reddish we may consider, and perhaps with safety, garnet and 
carnelian. In some places about the shores of these lakes there are large 
quantities of the black and red sand; some nearly all black, and others 
mostly red. I have specimens from Lake Michigan that are all black 
and all magnetic. When we commit an error, it is more important that 
it should be corrected than to develope a new truth. I therefore have a 
desire that this correction should be as extensively known as the error.” 
3. An Essay on the Development and Modifications of the Ex- 
ternal Organs of Plants. Compiled chiefly from the writings of J. 
Wolfgang Von Goethe, for a public lecture to the class of the Chester 
County Cabinet of Natural Science. By William Darlington, M. D.” 
West Chester, Penn. 1839. 12mo. pp. 38.—The object of this es- 
‘ay, is, in the words of its author, to give “an exposition of the views 
Which are entertained by some of the most eminent naturalists of the 
#3 'especting the successive development and modification, or trans- 
formation, of the external organs of Plants; showing that all their ap- 
Pendages,—from the crude cotelydons of the germinating seed, to the 
most delicate component parts of the perfect flower,—are nothing but 
Modified forms of that expansive tissue which envelopes the tender 
Shoots of plants, and is the principal seat of vegetable life; or, in other 
Words, that the organized covering, called the bark of plants, is the ori- 
ginal raw material, (if I may so term it,) from which are formed and 
elaborated all those multiform organs, or appendages to the stem and 
branches, known by the names of Leaves, Stipules, Bracts, Involucres, 
Glumes, Calyces, Corollas, Nectaries, Stamens and Pistils.” The 
serm of this doctrine is found in the writings of Linneus, but it was 
_ fully developed in 1790, by Goethe, whose fame as a poet-has 
eclipsed his reputation as a naturalist. The labors of succeeding bot- 
aniats have established its truth. Dr. Darlington has presented this 
“urious subject in an interesting and lucid manner, and with his accus- 
tomed scientific accuracy. 
4, ag of the Essex County (Mass.) Natural Flistory Society, 
Bro., alem.—T he first number of this Journal was published in 1836, 
2 sry OS ei a eaaseae : 
* An equivocal inconclusive result.—Eds. 
