BOTANY. 551 
blunders are simply wonderful. For fair examples, picked up at 
random : —‘‘ Notice of a collection of Bird skins from Hayti,” and 
“Ornithology of the Bermudas” are placed under Australia and 
Oceanica! ‘Ueber die Aptenodytes und Diomedeaarten Süd- 
Georgiens ” under America septentrionalis! ‘ List of birds, etc., 
of the District of Columbia” under America centralis! Finally, to 
endorse the words of a late reviewer, “misprints abound to 
such an extent, that the work reads not unlike ‘first proofs just 
issued from the hands of a careless printer. 
The defects of the work are glaring, and of the peculiarly exas- 
perating nature that detains the most lenient critic against his 
will; but we must not allow them to blind us to the value of Dr. 
 Giebel’s labors, which they may overshadow but cannot eclipse. 
=E. C. 
BOTANY. e 
ÅCCLIMATIZATION or Prants.—In the “ Archives des Sciences 
Physiques et Naturelles” of Geneva for J une, Alph. De Candolle 
ils a series of investigations of the question whether the 
habits of plants are changed by the action of the climate acting 
through a succession of generations. For this purpose he obtained 
seeds of plants which are widely dispersed over Europe from dif- 
ferent localities, Edinburgh, Moscow, Montpéllier and Palermo, and 
sowed them simultaneously and under similar conditions at Geneva. 
The general results of a somewhat limited series of experiments were 
that the seeds, obtained from the more northern localities, germi- 
hated on the whole somewhat earlier than those derived from 
a southern latitudes, and were also rather more rapid in 
atriving at maturity. The difference was still more observable in 
the second generation; but sufficient variation was shown in the 
Seeds obtained from the same locality to make the results of but 
small value without a much larger series of observations.—A. W. B. 
g Errecr OF THE Eruption or Vesuvius oN VEGETATION.— An 
; interesting paper appears in the “ Accademia delle Scienze Fisiche 
© Matematiche” of Naples, by G. A. Pasquale, on the effects of 
the recent eruption of Vesuvius on the plants in the neighborhood. 
The newest vegetation has suffered from contact with the ashes, 
ugh the effect has been neither a scorching nor drying up. The 
action has not been a mechanical one; for a mere closing of the 
