Miscellanies. 377 



MISCELLANIES. 



(foreign and domestic.) 



Extracts and translations by Prof. Griscom. 



NATURAL HISTOKY. 



1. The Planera, formerly called the Siberian Elm, is a tree which 

 grows on the borders of the Caspian and of the Black Sea. Ac- 

 cording to an account given of it to the French Academy on the 

 31st of January, last, by Desfontaines and Mirbel, it grows to the 

 height of twenty-five or thirty metres, with a straight and well pro- 

 portioned trunk, free from branches, to the height of eight or nine 

 metres, and of three or four metres or more in circumference. Its 

 head is large, and tufted, and the branches rise almost perpendicu- 

 larly. The sap of the Planera is white, but acquires a red color to- 

 ward the heart. It is heavier and stronger than the elm or chesnut, 

 and ojf so close a texture as to receive a beautiful pohsh. The wood 

 is so hard that it is difficult to drive a nail into it. It has the supple- 

 ness and elasticity of oak, and is preferred to that wood for planks 

 and carpentry in Georgia. It is not subject to worms, and is very 

 durable in water and in the ground. Being larger than the forest 

 trees of Fraflce, it offers many advantages, and is deemed well wor- 

 thy of cultivation. Its foliage is never injured by caterpillars. — 

 Rev. Ency. Jan. 1831. 



2. Change of climate ; diminiiiion of temperature on the surface 

 of the earth. — It is not pnly from analogy, observes Mr. Lyell in his 

 new work on geology, that we must infer a diminution of tempera- 

 ture in the climate of Europe ; there are proofs of this doctrine in 

 the only countries hitherto studied by geologists, in which we might 

 expect to find direct proofs. It is not in England, or in the north of 

 France, but on the borders of the Mediterranean, from the south of 

 Spain-to Calabria, and in the islands of the same sea, that we must 

 look for conclusive demonstrations of this fact. For it is not only in 

 beds whose .fossil shells are like the shells of living species, that a 

 theory of climate can be subjected to a kind of experimentum crucis. 

 In Sicily, at Ischia and in Calabria, where fossil shells of the most 

 recent beds belong almost entirely to kinds which are known to be 



