Miscellanies. 395 
The temperature of May and October was the same. ‘The great- 
est range of the thermometer in any one month was 60° in January, 
and the least 27° in August. Whole range during the year 90°. 
The minimum of temperature here was considerably higher than in 
some places at the south and west. At Nashville, Tenn. the mini- - 
mum was 18° below zero, while with us it was 2° above, and only 
4° lower than in the preceding winter. 
This spring has been unusually cold. Vegetation is generally 
backward, and garden plants have been several times injured by 
frost in May, and even as late as the 27th. While I am writing, 
(June 1st,) the thermometer stands at 54°; last year, on this day, 
it was at 90°. 
No occurrence of the Aurora Borealis was observed during the 
year. 
Under showers, I have noticed those days on which rain fell but 
a small part of the time; some of which are, of course, marked 
under cloudy, and others under fazr. 
4, Treatise on Mineratocy; by Cuartes UpHam SHEPARD, 
Lecturer on Botany in Yale College; Member of the American Geo- 
logical Society ; Corresponding Member of the Academy of Natural 
Sciences of Philadelphia, §c. New Haven: H. Howe, 1832.— 
‘The above named work, partly on the plan of Prof. Mohs, and partly 
original, treats of Mineralogy as an independent science, separating 
from it a variety of information formerly regarded as belonging to it 5 
and presents the scientific departments of which it consists distinctly, 
in strict conformity with the method according to which the other 
branches of Natural History are treated. The way in which the 
science has heretofore beén treated among us, has obviously lacked 
the convenience and the precision of its sister sciences Botany and 
‘Zoology. A great variety of unconnected information relating to 
minerals has been presented together, much of which belongs to other 
sciences; the effect of which was to prevent a clear conception,of — 
Mineralogy, and to render inapparent its relation to other branches 
of knowledge. Its departments were either not distinguished at all, 
or were more or less involved. The idea of the species, especially, 
was not fixed; and if the characteristic and description were not en- 
tirely blended together, yet the essential characters did not extend to 
the exclusion of above three or four species. For these reasons, it is 
well known that the cultivators of other branches of Natural History 
