476 Miscellaneous. 



These two gentlemen will also feel the necessity of not sejjarating 

 themselves from their laborious colleague M. le Guillon ; they will 

 not wish to leave him all the burden and all the honour of the M^ork ; 

 still less will they be able to treat, as having no existence, whatever 

 has been described before them, and made public by being printed. 

 There would be but one voice in oj^position to this manner of treat- 

 ing science, and without being aware of it, they would come to a 

 lamentable result, that of for ever throwing discredit upon publica- 

 tions for which the state makes enormous sacrifices. — S. Petit. Revue 

 Zoologique, p. 329, No. x. 1841. 



[We know nothing of the merits of this particular case, but insert the 

 above as the subject to which it relates is of general interest. — Ed.] 



NESTS OF THE HIRUNDO RIPARIA. 



" M. Eugene Robert, having had an opportunity of observing the 

 nests which the sand-martens excavate in the gravelly banks along 

 the river Volga, noticed that the upper surfaces exhibited a yellowish 

 white plastering of animal matter. 'I'his matter, in which he ex- 

 pected to find some analogy to that of which the nest of the Hirundo 

 esculenta is comjjosed, appeared to him formed of the spawn of fish, 

 perhaps of the sturgeon, which is common in that river. 



" It is impossible," says M, Robert, " not to observe in this ar- 

 rangement an admirable foresight in the bird, to prevent the falling 

 down of the gravel from destroying its dwelling." — Comptes Rendus 

 Nov. 1841. 



Some Notices of the Late Professor Don, and of his Father, 

 Mr. George Don, formerly Curator of the Edinburgh 

 Botanic Garden*. 



As Professor Don was, in the strictest sense of the terms, a here- 

 ditary botanist, naturalist, and man of general information, it may 

 not be amiss, before giving an exceedingly brief outline of the prin- 

 cipal events of his life, to say something still more brief of his father. 

 We have no occasion to dilate u^^on the character of either ; they 

 are safe in the memories of large circles of friends ; and wherever 

 either had an ojjportunity of making an impression, the remembrance 

 of it is delightful. 



Mr. George Don was a native of Kincardineshire, from which, 

 however, his parents removed in his infancy. While yet a very 

 little boy he revisited the place of his nativity ; and the clergyman 

 of the parish, having called on the family with whom Don was re- 

 siding, found the nascent student of nature busily engaged forming 

 into a natural system of his own, all the wild flowers which he had 

 been able to cull in the neighbourhood ; upon observing which, the 

 clergyman remarked, that a boy, who voluntarily entered upon such 

 a course at the very dawning of life, would ultimately become one 

 of the brightest and most successful naturalists of his time. 



* Extracted from an article in the Florist's Journal, No. xxiv. 



