158 NATURAL HISTORY MISCELLANY. 
Tur Recorp or Enromoiocy for the year 1870 will be soon is- 
sued, and it is hoped that subscribers to the previous parts will feel 
inclined to support this undertaking another year. 3 
Synopsis or EUROPEAN COLEOPTERA DESCRIBED IN 1868. *—This 
is a most convenient work for European coleopterists, and is of 
considerable value to American entomologists. Each species, de- 
scribed as new, is briefly characterized in Latin, so that entomolo- 
gists of every nationality can read it. When will the time come 
for the publication of a similar yearly synopsis in America for all 
the insects? 
NATURAL HISTORY MISCELLANY. 
BOTANY. 
Tue JARDIN pEs Puantes, Parts: Feb. 20.— To-day we drove 
round to the house of M. Decaisne, whose celebrity as a botanist 
is too well known for any further comment to be necessary, and 
under his kind and most interesting guidance I visited a scene 
which was full of painful interest. The gardens had apparently 
been a point of especial bombardment, and no fewer than eighty- 
three shells had fallen within their comparatively limited area. 
We went out to the glass-houses to judge for ourselves of the ef- 
fects. On the nights of January 8th and 9th, four shells fell in- 
to the glass-houses and shattered the greater part of them into 
atoms. A heap of glass fragments, lying hard by, testified to the 
_ destruction, but the effect of the shells was actually to pulverize 
the glass, so that it fell almost like dust over the gardens. 
consequence was that nearly the whole of this most rare and val- 
uable collection was exposed to one of the coldest nights 
year, and whole families of plants were killed by the frost. 
of the plants suffered the most singular effects from the concu- 
sion; the fibres were stripped bare, and the bark peeled off i 
many instances. One house into which we went presented a most 
lamentable appearance of bare poles; scarcely a leaf was left. 
a eoe es 
* Synopsis Coleopterorum Europæ et Confinium, anno 1868, descriptorum. Anew” 
G. R. Crotch, M. A. London: Williams & Norgate, 1870. 8vo. pp- 68 
oasis CERTANEI 
