286: Scientific Intelligence. 
et J. Decatsnze.—The twentieth volume closes the third series of this 
most important of natural-history periodicals ; and a fourth series com- 
_mences with the year 1854. e only fault to be found with the work 
is, that it is, as usual, behind date, only three monthly numbers baving 
as yet appeared during the current year. But this is much better than 
in former times, when it had fallen almost a twelvemonth behind. Of 
the Botanical volumes, the most important articles within the last three 
years have been: Naudin’s monograph of the Melastomacee of the 
ography of the Lichenes (embracing 240 pages of letter-press and 16 
antheridia of Cryptogams, especially of the Algw, &c.; a series of 
very important papers by Trécul on the origin and development of 
ligneous fibres in the stems of plants, the mode of increase of dicotyl- 
edonous stems in diameter, and on the formation of leaves (in all which 
the author is winning a high reputation as a vegetable anatomist) ; 
some good papers by Garreau on what he calls, perhaps with good rea- 
son, the respiration of plants, he confining this term to the decomposi- 
tion of vegetable products and the conversion of carbon into carbonic 
good papers by M. Payen, on the organogeny of the flower in several 
families; and an article by Lucaze-Duthiers on the nature and devel- 
opment of galls and other abnormal productions of plants caused by 
the puncture of i s, &c. 
The two fasciculi of the Ist volume of the fourth series contain 
some papers of descriptive botany ; one by Groenland of Altona on the 
germination of certain Hepatice, beautifully illustrated ; one by Trécul, 
elaborately investigating the formation of vessels and the so-called 
radicular fibres under adventitious buds, explaining quite differently 
from M. Gaudichaud the well-known facts which found their readiest 
explanation according to the theoretical view of the latter; this is illus- 
trated by three admirable plates. M. Dareste endeavors to prove, with 
Trichodesmium erythreum of Montagne, from which the Red sea de- 
rives its occasional hue, and, it is thought, its name. A. G. 
8. Mammoth Trees of California.—Some details may be expected, 
from the writer in the Sonora Herald cited in the last number of this 
Journal, respecting several large Coniferous trees in California. Mean 
while, it may be well to state, first: that the hollowed section of @ 
