232 Foreign Notices. 



the catalogue. We would suggest whether several more may not 

 still be appended to the list. In the mouths of small fresh streams, 

 where they enter into the sea, may be found an elegant little fish, 

 which we have reason to suppose, without any other means of as- 

 certaining than we possess, a beautiful species of Gastrosteus, 

 (stickle back,) and it is not unlikely that this is not the only spe- 

 cies. Do the mud fishes of Le Lueur, which he separated from 

 the Cyprinidae, com])rise the minnows of marine or fresh waters ? 

 We could wish to see a work of ^purely scientific character, with 

 plain and correct figures of each genus, on our native fishes, and 

 trust that the further researches of Dr. Storer will lead to some 

 such result. 



An analysis of several coals, by Dr. Jackson, closes the present 

 number. The newly discovered Mansfield anthracite was also 

 subjected to his inv^estigation. It resembles, in combustion, the 

 Peach Mountain, of Pennsylvania. Time and labor will only decide 

 whether its discovery will be of any real importance, or its exist- 

 ence and presence be of any considerable extent. • R. 



MISCELLANEOUS INTELLIGENCE. 



Art. I. General JVotices. 



Irregular Metamorphoses of Plants. — In flowers, irregular metamorphoses 

 are extremely common : they consist of a multiplicity of the petals, of a 

 transformation of the petals into stamens, and a change in color or in 

 scent. In roses the nuiltiplication of petals is the neai-ly universal cause 

 of the double state of these flowers ; in the rose ceillet and many 

 anemones, impletion depends upon the conversion of petals into 

 stamens. 



With regard to color, its infinite changes and metamorphoses in almost 

 every cultivated flower can be compared to nothing but the alterations 

 caused in the plumage of birds or the hair of animals by domestication. 

 No cause has ever been assigned for these phenomena, neither has any 

 attempt been made to determine the cause in i)lants. 



We are, however, in possession of the knowledge of some of the laws 

 mider which c-hange of color is effected. A blue flower will change to 

 white or red, but not to bright yellow ; a bright yellow flower will be- 

 come white or red, but never blue. Thus tlie liyaciuth, of which the 

 primitive color is blue, produces abundance of white and red varieties, 

 but nothing that can be comjiared to bright yellow; the yellow hyacinths, 

 so called, being a sort of pale yellow ochre color, verging to green. 

 Again, the ranunculus^ which is originally of an intense yellow, sports into 



