Ixiv PROCEEDINGS OE THE 



publislied about 130 quarto volumes of Hiatoire and Memoires, 

 when it was suppressed in the great Prencli Revolution. Reesta- 

 blished a short time afterwards as a class of the National Institute 

 of Sciences and Arts, it issued, under the Republic and Empire, 

 from the an vi. (1798) to 1815, fifteen volumes of Memoires de 

 rinstitut National des Sciences et Arts, Sciences Mathematiques 

 et Physiques, including a few Natural-History papers by Cuvier, 

 Lacepede, Ventenat, Desfontainea, and others. In 1815 the In- 

 stitute was again reorganized, and the old name of Academy of 

 Sciences restored to the Mathematico-physical branch, and two 

 ncAV series of quarto Transactions were commenced. Of the one, 

 entitled Memoires de I'Academie des Sciences de I'lnstitut (with 

 or without the epithet of Royal or Imperial, according to the 

 political atmosphere of the day) de Trance, we have tliirty- 

 three volumes up to 1864 ; of the other, the Memoires pre- 

 sentes par divers savants a I'Academie (Royale or Imperiale) des 

 Sciences de I'lnstitut de France, seventeen volumes to 1862. In 

 this long series the Natural-History papers scarcely average above 

 one in every two volumes ; and although two or three of the more 

 important ones, each occupying the whole, or nearly the whole, 

 of a volume, may be considered as so many independent works 

 published under the sanction of the Academy, yet it is to be re- 

 gretted that the shorter ones should be thus, here as in other cases, 

 buried in the mass of the more abstruse sciences into which the 

 naturalist cannot enter. With the exception of two unimportant 

 papers in the earlier volumes, Ramond on the Vegetation of the 

 Pic du Midi and Delile on Benincasa, and of Dumeril's classifica- 

 tions of Pish, Reptiles, and Insects, the whole of the zoological 

 and botanical memoirs in these volumes relate to animal and 

 vegetable Anatomy and Physiology ; the zoological ones (in 

 chronological order) in the Memoires de I'Academie by Plourens, 

 Geoffrey de St. Hilaire, Milne-Edwards, Breschet, Duvernoy, De 

 Serres, and Quatrefages ; and in the Memoires de divers savants 

 by Du.vernoy, Leon Diifour, Baudrimont, Martin de St. Ange, 

 Robineau-Desvoidy, Breschet, Duges, Cortes, Bourguignon, and 

 Lereboullet ; the botanical in the Memoires de I'Academie by 

 Mirbel, Dutrochet, A. de St. Hilaire, Turpin, Mirbel, and Payen ; 

 and in the Memoires de divers savans by Couverchel, C. H. Shutz, 

 Graudichaud, Payen, Duchartre, and "W. R. Schimper. 



The full reports of the weekly meetings of the Academy, so well 

 known under the name of Comptes Rendus hebdomadaires des 

 Seances de I'Academie des Sciences, in a small qiiarto form, com- 



