428 



PART III. 

 MISCELLANEOUS INTELLIGENCE. 



Art. I. Natural History in Foreign Countries, 



GERMANY. 



The German Naturalists aiid Physicians held their eighth Annual Meeting 

 at Heidelberg on the 18th of September. Professor Tiedmann was chosen 

 first manager, and opened the assembly with a discourse on the progress 

 of the natural sciences, their present state, and their influence on civil 

 society. Among these influences some of the most important were, a taste 

 for facts instead of hypothetical reasoning ; a love of truth, from observ- 

 ii\g the fitness oi^ means to ends in natural objects ; and universal charity, 

 from observing the care bestowed by the Author of nature on all his works. 

 Mr. Brown of London and Professor Whewell of Cambridge were present. 

 Professor Lichtenstein delivered the accustomed valedictory oration, con- 

 cluding with the following words : — " We now take leave of you, and of 

 this friendly abode of science, with feelings of the most grateful recollection 

 of the abundant and various information and enjoyment which our meeting 

 has again aj0forded us on this occasion. Neither the banks of the Elbe, nor 

 those of any greater or smaller stream that we may visit in the sequel, will 

 ever be able to efface or to obscure the lively image which we now carry 

 away with us from the wood and vine-covered hills of the Neckar." {Fo- 

 reign Quarterly Review ^ p. 352.) 



Hamburgh was appoiiited the place of meeting for the year 1830. 

 George Dahl^ the noted insect dealer of Vienna, whom we were disap- 

 pointed in not seeing, when we spent a fortnight in that city last Septem- 

 ber, lately returned through Florence from an eighteen months' tour in 

 Calabria, Sicily, &c., with a rich harvest of insects which he has collected 

 for sale, to add to his former stores enumerated in his Coleoptera and Lepi- 

 doptera (Vienna, 1823, 8vo), a catalogue of 104 pages, specifying about 6000 

 species, at prices generally very moderate: 4 to 12 kreutzers (Id. to 3rf.), 

 for common species, and 15 to 30 for the rarer only. Very few exceed a 

 florin (2*.). — W. S. Florence, April 2. 1830. 



SWITZERLAND. 



The Swiss Naturalists held their last Meeting in July at the Monastery of 

 the Great St. Bernard. More than eighty naturalists attended from the 

 diiFerent towns and cities of Switzerland ; a great number of strangers were 

 also present. Three meetings were held ; various excursions made in the 

 neighbourhood, and two entomologists from Lausanne collected more than 

 2000 species of insects. " A letter from one of the German naturalists 

 present has been published in the Morgenhlatty in which it gave us pain to 

 observe the following remark on our countrymen : — On the first evening 

 after their arrival at the Monastery, the strangers, and particularly the Ger- 

 mans, very soon became acquainted with each other. New groups were 

 formed every instant. A frank and cordial gaiety, the result of mutual 

 kindness, soon prevailed among us. The English alone remained strangers 



