105 
commerce or by conquest. Probably it was spread by both 
these means. The art of the Bronze age can only be traced 
home to the Etruscans, that mysterious people who are a 
terror to the philologists, and of whom we know historically 
that they were powerful by land and sea, that they were 
famous workers in metal, and possessed of quantities of 
amber. He therefore thought it probable that the amber 
trade with the shores of the Baltic, and the tin trade with 
Spain and Britain, distributed over a large part of Europe, 
the produce of the Etruscan workshops. On the decay of 
the Etruscan power the trade was taken up by the Phoeni= 
cians, the great maritime people who possessed no distinctive 
style of art of their own, but manufactured goods for the 
various markets, like the manufacturers of Manchester and 
Birmingham. He did not therefore see how the popular 
view could be maintained that the art of the Bronze age 
was introduced into Northern and Central Europe by the 
Phoenicians, 
MICROSCOPICAL AND NATURAL HISTORY SECTION. 
January 18th, 1875. 
John Barrow, Esq., in the Chair. 
Mr. James Cosmo Melvill, M.A., F.L.S., read a paper on 
the Botany of Wilmington, North Carolina, with an especial 
reference to the habitat of Hionsea muscipula (Ellis). He 
visited the place in May, 1872, and after passing an 
extensive sandy tract, N.W. of the city, where grew 
Kobinia hispida, vai\ Elliottil, Lupinus diffusus, Stipulicida 
Setacea, &c., arrived at a pine barren, beyond which was a 
marsh, and found Hionsea growing amongst rushes, Helonias 
