Bibliographical Notices. 363 



The Nicotiana nana, Lindl. Bot. Reg. tab. 833, referred by 

 Don to his section Polydiclia, cannot belong to this genus, as its 

 ovarium is bilocular, and as it corresponds in few respects. The 

 plant has certainly nothing of the habit of a Nicotiana, and it is 

 difficult, in the absence of a satisfactory specimen, to determine 

 to what genus it should be referred. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES. 



Antiquites Celtiques et Ante'diluviennes ; Memoire sur I' Industrie pri- 

 mitive et les Arts a leurorigine, avec 80 planches representant 1600 

 figures. Paris, 1849. 



This very curious and interesting work is the result of the labours 

 and researches of a gentleman of independent fortune, and of taste, 

 science and public spirit, residing at Abbeville. He has been from the 

 first commencement of the Societe d'Emulation in that city its ac- 

 tive, liberal, and munificent President. During the last ten years he 

 has gone to the expense of ascertaining what remains of primitive 

 art could be discovered underneath the beds of peat, gravel and 

 other materials, which cover the bottom of his own valley, that of 

 the river Somme, and he has extended his inquiries also into the 

 valley of the Seine. The deposits which he has turned over have not 

 been simply alluvial in the strict geological sense of the word, but 

 have also presented those appearances, especially in their fossil con- 

 tents, which have always been considered as distinctive of diluvium. 

 In these deposits to a great extent and in numerous instances 

 M. Boucher de Perthes has found articles of bone, horn and flint, 

 evidently fashioned by human labour, and intended to serve the 

 purposes of arms, tools, utensils and symbols. He has discovered 

 these objects both in the midst of and several metres below the de- 

 bris of elephants, mastodons, saurians, and other extinct species, 

 specimens of which, presented by him, are exhibited in the Museum 

 of Natural History at Paris. Collections of the rudely shaped, but 

 indisputably artificial objects so situated may be seen in the museums 

 at Abbeville and Amiens ; and in addition to his ample relations of 

 his researches, the author has given outline figures of many hundreds 

 of them in the numerous plates which illustrate his volume. Such 

 is the importance attached to his labours by the best judges in his 

 own country, that the Acad^mie des Sciences has at his request ap- 

 pointed MM. S. Cordier, Dufrenoy, and Elie de Beaumont as a com- 

 mission to investigate the subject in its relation to geology, and the 

 Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres has named another com- 

 mission, including MM. Jomard and Raoul-Rochette, to examine the 

 matter as archaeologists (pp. v, vi, x). 



The subject of this remarkable volume is one, in the treatment of 

 which archaeology and geology join hands. It consequently em- 

 braces a great variety of considerations bearing upon history, phy- 

 siology, and other branches of science. The numerous questions 



