Miscellan ies. 187 



fresh arguments in favor of its eastern origin. Among them is the name 

 by which it has been long in Europe, bU de Turquie, and varieties, 

 it is said, have been brought from the Isle of France, or from China. 

 Moreau de Jonnes, on the contrary, has recently maintained in a 

 memoir read before the Academy of Science, that its origin was in 

 America. The name bU de Turquie no more proves it to be of 

 Turkish origin than the name of Italian poplar proves that that tree 

 grew wild in Italy. It can only signify that it spread from Turkey 

 into the neighboring countries. Its general cultivation in southern 

 Europe, and the production of some new varieties, proves nothing 

 with regard to the country of the species. 



In favor of its American origin, is the fact that it was found in a 

 state of cultivation in every place where the first navigators landed ; in 

 Mexico, according to Hernandiz, and in Brazil according to Zeri, and 

 that in the various countries, it had proper names. Such as Maize, 

 Flaolli, fyc. while in the old world its names were either all of 

 American origin, or names of the neighboring region whence it was 

 immediately derived, and that immediately after the discovery of 

 America it spread rapidly in the old world and soon became common, 

 a fact not reconcilable with the idea of its former existence there. 



To these proofs Aug. de Saint Hilaire has added another. He 

 has received from M. de Larranhaga of Montevideo, a new variety 

 of Maize distinguished by the name of Tunicata, because instead of 

 having the grains naked they are entirely covered by the glumes. 

 This variety is from Paraguay where it is cultivated by the Guaycu- 

 rus Indians, a people in the lowest scale of civilization, and where, 

 according to the direct testimony of one them, it grows in the humid 

 forests as a native production. — Bib. Univ. Jan. 1830. 



9. Heat lightning. — The flickering motion of lightning, some- 

 times styled vespertine, observable in the clouds near the horizon, 

 after a warm day, unaccompanied by thunder or any sound whatever, 

 is ascribed by Huber-Burnaud, in a letter to the editors of the Bib. 

 Univ. to thunder storms at so great a distance that not only the sound 

 of the thunder cannot possibly reach the ear, but that the curvature 

 of the earth conceals the clouds which are concerned in the electric 

 discharges almost entirely from the sight. The lightning which we 

 observe in those cases, he considers as only the flashes of light which 

 break through the highest stratum of the thunder cloud, and which 

 dart into a region so elevated as to become visible at a very great 



