398 Linnean Society of Paris. 
about eight or nine hundred octavo pages—the subscription 
price at Paris is 18 francs per annum. e have just receiv- 
ed the number for January, 1827, which completes the fifth 
volume. The Society includes within its scope every branch 
of natural science, with the application of science to the arts ; 
and the annals are diversified with an interesting variety of 
matter. 
The fifth volume contains two elaborate memoirs on the 
nectary of plants; one by M. Soyer-Willimet, the other by 
arrangement of the known mosses, by M. G. A. Walker Ar- 
nott, of Edinburgh, with notes, &c. by M. B. Kittel, com- 
poses a very long and elaborate article. 
The Paragréle, or Hail Rod, (see this Journal, vol. x. p. 
196) has for several years occasioned much inquiry on the 
continent, and has engaged the particular attention of the 
ociety. In many districts, which were formerly, year a 
year, devastated by hail, the instrument has been ado) 
with complete success, while in neighboring districts, not a 
tected by paragreles, the crops have been damaged as usual ; 
and the Society are receiving from all quarters statements 
which fully confirm their opinion of the utility of the inven- 
tion. The Society have made a report to the ministers of the 
interior, recommending that measures be adopted by the gen- 
eral government = Saxine the country from hail; and it 
is estimated, from e result of experiments in num is- 
that if ie were established chrouptoat Mie 
of France, it would occasion an annual saving to the revenue 
of fifty millions of francs.* 
The Ergot is the subject of a memoir by M. Léveille, who 
describes it as a parasitic fungus, under the name of Spha- 
celia segetum. He seems to credit the opinion that this sub- 
stance will produce convulsions and dry gangrerie. No men- 
tion is made of our countryman, Dr. Stearns, who first made 
known that property for which the ergot is now medicinally 
employed. (See New-York Med. Repository, vols. v. and vi.) 
. de Serres has given: an interesting notice of fossil bones, 
found i in caverns of limestone situated in the environs of Lu- 
ieil, near Montpellier. In a memoir on sound, M. Gi- 
st people of the United States, where hail storms are erage 
U mages very inconsiderable, this estimate may seem 
extravagant; but countries in which at least one-ifteenth of a whole an 
oe = crops is strove by hail, this subject is viewed swith intere 
mi 
