MisceUaneons. 319 



letter containing a cheque for jCoO, Avliich I returned to liim, ob- 

 sernng that there were duplicate specimens of certain Ijirds in the 

 collection that we had not in the British Museum, and that I should 

 be pleased if he would let the Museum have them, which he most 

 readily acceded to. 



The collection was a very large and good one, but it has one 

 fiiult common to most French collections ; that is to say, the bird- 

 stuffers constantly pull off the feathers, and replace them, with gum, 

 so as to give the body a smooth appearance, and they are not 

 always careful to put the feathers into the parts from which they 

 were extracted. Until I saw the operation in the French laboratories 

 I could not understand why some figures of birds in French works, 

 and some descriptions of species taken from specimens in French 

 museums, are said, as in Wagler's ' Systema Avium,' not to be quite 

 true to nature. 



Genera of Gorgoniadce. By Professor Veemll. 



Professor Yerrill, in a paper on the Corals and Polypes of the west 

 coast of America, in the first volume of the 'Transactions of the Con- 

 necticut Academy,' p. 385, proposes to divide the family GorgoniadcB 

 into genera according to the spicules, thus : — 



1. Gorgonia, with spindles in the coenenchyma and an external 

 layer of peculiar small club-shaped spicules, producing a smooth sur- 

 face. Type G. verrucosa. Professor Yerrill says this genus is very 

 nearly allied to Emiicea. 



2. Pterogorr/ia. The spicules in the coenenchyma small, with double 

 spindles, and also crescent- or bracket-shaped; they are nearly smooth 

 on the convex side. Type P. acerosa. 



3. Eagorgia, with longer and shorter double spindles and nu- 

 merous double wheels ; surface decidedly granulous with naked spi- 

 cules. Type E. ampJa. 



4. Litigorgia, having only the two forms of double spindles; surface 

 somewhat granulous, but less so than in the last. Type L. Fierce. 



He proposes to divide the genera into groups according to the 

 branching of the coral, which M. Yalenciennes used as a generic 

 character. 



LamarcTc's Collection of Shells. By Dr. J. E. Gray. 



Lamarck, in his work on Invertebratcd Animals, described some of 

 the species of shells from specimens in his own cabinet, and others from 

 examples in the Museum of the Jardin des Plantes. This naturalist, 

 who had a most wonderful ficulty of perceiving natural groups and 

 their relation to each other, and certainly was one of the most in- 

 dustrious of the votaries of natural science (for he not only publislied 

 on zoology and botany, but on other branches of science), in his old 

 age became blind, and so reduced in circumstances that when I 

 saw him he was living in a very small room, with scarcely any fur- 

 niture, on the stair leading to the library of the museum, chicflv 

 supported by the labours of his daughters, who were employed to 



