General Science. 185 



for publication. We understand Dr De Kay of New York had also been 

 collecting materials for a similar work, but has now transferred them 

 to his friend, Dr Harlan. 



IV. GENERAL SCIENCE. 



32. Remarkable Dissection of a Female Mummy. — This dissection, per- 

 formed by Dr Granville, was exhibited before the Royal Society. After 

 depriving the body, by ebullition and maceration, of the bees-wax, myrrh, 

 gum, resin, bitumen and tannin, with which it had been impregnated and 

 preserved, the parts resembled recent preparations ; and though the body 

 must have lived 3000 years ago, Dr Granville was enabled to ascertain the 

 age at which the lady died, and also that she had borne children, and had 

 died of ovarian dropsy. Dr Granville has also given the dimensions of its 

 various parts, and it is truly singular, that these happen to be precisely 

 those of the Venus de Medicis. 



33. Discoveries in Nova Zembla. — The Russian officer. Captain Lilk, has 

 returned from his third Expedition to Nova Zembla. He has discovered 

 the Bay of Matorsky in 69° 44' of N. lat. by 8° 33' of W. long. He ad T 

 vanced as far as 76° 48' of N. lat., but was stopped by the ice, and a storm, 

 which damaged his vessel, prevented him from examining the island com- 

 pletely. — Journal des Voyages, torn. xxv. p. 257. 



34. Hazel Nuts found in a singular state at a great depth. — We have been 

 kindly presented, by Sir John Hay, Bart, of Smithsfield and Hayston, 

 with a packet of hazel nuts, found upon one of his farms at Bonnington, 

 about one mile south from Peebles. The nuts were found in a bog, about 

 eight feet below the surface. The top soil was three feet of meadow clay, 

 beneath which was a layer of greyish coloured gravel about four and half 

 feet thick. The bottom of the bog consisted of a mixture of grey sand 

 and brown moss, with some branches of stumps of trees, quite rotten. The 

 nuts were found nearest the bottom of this substance. The bog is part of 

 a meadow about 1500 yards long, by about from 300 to 600 feet broad, 

 having a declivity of about one foot in 400. 



Upon opening these nuts, we were surprised to find, that the kernel in all 

 of them had entirely disappeared, though the membrane which enclosed it, and 

 the nut itself, were as entire as if the nut had been fresh and ripe. By 

 opening the nut carefully, the membrane could be taken out in the form 

 of a perfect bag, without the least opening. The substance of the kernel 

 must therefore have escaped through the membrane and the shell in a 

 gaseous form, or must have passed through them, when decomposed or dis- 

 solved by water, In some of the nuts, that had not arrived at maturity, 

 the bag was very small, and was surrounded, as in the fresh nut, with the 

 soft fungous substance, which had resisted decay. 



35. The Menai Bridge near Bangor, Carnarvonshire. — On Tuesday, tin 

 26th of April 1825, the first chain of this stupendous work was thrown 

 over the Straits of Menai, in presence of an immense concourse of persons 



