Ohio Shells, 



371 



ference and respect for the labours of those naturalists who are 

 resident in the western country, and to express our regret that 

 we have not more frequent opportunities of noticing them. They 

 have a boundless field of inquiry ; they are on the spot, and a host 

 of anxious naturalists in Europe and America, ever ready to re- 

 ceive information from them. These are great inducements, and 

 are sure to operate beneficially in the end ; but we are of the 

 present day, and are desirous of possessing all the information 

 which the actual spirit of natural science solicitously calls for. 



We take occasion to repeat here, that we shall always be 

 ready to notice, in the most favourable manner, the discoveries 

 and opinions of the naturalists of the western country ; and the 

 article now under consideration would not, perhaps, have escaped 

 our attention so long, if it were not that a paper devoted to 

 natural history, which is corked up, as it were, in a medical 

 journal, although of the greatest respectability, was not likely to 

 come under the notice — at the earliest day — of an editor who is 

 not medical, and who has enough to do to keep up with the 

 journals devoted to natural science. 



Messrs. Short and Eaton made an excursion to the Ohio river, 

 about eighty miles due north from Lexington. They directed 

 their attention to the vegetable productions of the intermediate 

 country, and to the shells of the Ohio, and the great Miami river. 

 Of these objects they have given catalogues, restricted to those 

 found during the excursion. The summer and fall had been un- 

 usually hot and dry ; the catalogue, however, is represented to 

 be a fair specimen of the latest autumnal flora of that part of 

 the country, no plant being mentioned in it which was not found 

 in flower, and the severe frosts which had commenced (16th 

 Sept. 1830) before their return from the excursion, having finally 

 arrested the florification of plants. This was, however, favoura- 

 ble to their other branch, conchology ; the waters of the Ohio and 

 Miami, being unusually low, and the shores more easily searched 

 for some distance into the beds of the streams. The localities which 

 were particularly resorted to for shells, were " those portions 

 of the Ohio river, on the northern side, lying a mile or two above 

 and below the mouth of Muddy creek, fifteen miles below Cincin- 

 nati, and the eastern borders of the great Miami, contiguous to 

 the village of Cleves, in Hamilton county, Ohio." In the botani- 

 cal catalogue, fifty plants are enumerated. Lycopus europceus. 



