Miscellanies. 187 



I now refer to. About eighteen months since, making some experiments 

 on iron ore, I obtained a white precipitate,* so near resembling that from 

 the sand, that I was led to suspect my mistake. I now undertook another 

 and more minute examination of the sand. I obtained the same white 

 precipitate, and submitted it to sublimation, but found no mercury, but 

 every appearance of iron. I have examined the sand with the magnet 

 and glasses. The black I think is a rich iron ore, highly magnetic ; the 

 red and reddish we may consider, and perhaps with safety, garnet and 

 carnelian. In some places about the shores of these lakes there are large 

 quantities of the black and red sand ; some nearly all black, and others 

 mostly red. I have specimens from Lake Michigan that are all black 

 and all magnetic. When we commit an error, it is more important that 

 it should be corrected than to develope a new truth. I therefore have a 

 desire that this correction should be as extensively known as the error." 



3. ^^ An Essay on the Development and Modifications of tJie Ex- 

 ternal Organs of Plants. Compiled chiefly from the loritings of J. 

 Wolfgang Von Goethe, /or a public lecture to the class of the Chester 

 County Cabinet of Natural Science. By William Darlington, M. D." 

 West Chester, Penn. 1839. 12mo. pp.38. — The object of this es- 

 say, is, in the words of its author, to give " an exposition of the views 

 which are entertained by some of the most eminent naturalists of the 

 age;^ respecting the successive development and modificalion, or trans- 

 formation, of the external organs of Plants ; showing that all their ap- 

 pendages, — from the crude cotelydons of the germinating seed, to the 

 most delicate component parts of the perfect flower, — are nothing but 

 modified forms of that expansive tissue which envelopes the tender 

 shoots of plants, and is the principal seat of vegetable life ; or, in other 

 words, that the organized covering, called the harJc of plants, is the ori- 

 ginal raio material, (if I may so term it,) from which are formed and 

 elaborated all those multiform organs, or appendages to the stem and 

 branches, known by the names of Leaves, Stipules, Bracts, Involucres, 

 Glumes, Calyces, Corollas, Nectaries, Stamens and Pistils." The 

 germ of this doctrine is found in the writings of Linna?us, but it was 

 first fully developed in 1790, by Goethe, whose fame as a poet has 

 eclipsed lids reputation as a naturalist. The labors of succeeding bot- 

 anists have established its truth. Dr. Darlington has presented this 

 curious subject in an interesting and lucid manner, and with his accus- 

 tomed scientific accuracy. 



4. Journal of the Essex County {Mass.) Natural History Society, 

 8vo., Salem. — The first number of this Journal was published in 1836, 



* An equivocal inconclusive result. — Eds. 



