ZOOLOGY AND BOTANY, MICROSCOPY, ETO. 
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sense of humour, and their humours, their cleverness and their stupidity, 
are problems still for the most part remaining for natural history to 
answer. Its students will find but scanty information on them through- 
out the entire stately library of science. The system thus inculcated 
was followed by Gilbert White. Old fashioned as it appears now, it 
may well be that the path it points out leads more directly than those 
which modern philosophy prefers to the solution of the deep mysterieL 
of the gradations of animate being and intelligence. With relation 
even to utility, which Dr. Hudson is ready to give up as off the 
naturalist’s beat, there are questions fully worthy of his consideration. 
Miss Ormerod has shown that natural science has its uses for agri- 
culture. Beside her particular charges there are other insect pests in 
plenty of which the world could be rid if naturalists would take the 
trouble to learn their habits. Where, for instance, is there a martyr of 
science willing to devote himself to a thorough search into the manners 
and morals of black-beetles, the things they love, and the things they 
hate ? A naturalist who taught London to understand, and rout and 
extirpate, them would deserve any metropolitan honours he chose to ask. 
The County Council might feast him as lavishly as the City Corpora- 
tion, and not the meanest ratepayer would grudge the cost of the 
entertainment.” 
New Italian Microscopical Journal. — We welcome the appearance 
of the first and second fascicles of the Bollettino della Societa Italiana dei 
Microscopisti, the organ of the Italian Society of Microscopists. The 
Society, which embraces the whole of Italy, was founded on the model 
of the corresponding Societies in England and America ; and its Bollet- 
tino will contain papers on the investigations of microscopists on animal 
and vegetable organisms, on petrology, on bacteriology, especially in its 
pathological relations, and on the structure of the Microscope and 
microscopical appliances. In addition to a number of minor articles 
and notes, the first number contains important paj>ers on a new genus 
of green Algm, and on two new genera of fossil Foraminifera, on a rock 
containing leucite from Etna, on the function of calcium oxalate in 
leaves, and two important contributions to bacteriology. 
Prof. Frey. — The death is announced of the famous Zurich professor. 
Dr. Heinrich Frey, one of our Honorary Fellows since 1879, who after 
forty years of active work, retired only a few months ago. Frey was 
born at Frankfort-on-the-Main, June 15th, 1822, and at twenty-five years 
of age had qualified, by brilliant preliminary studies, for the post of Docent 
in the University of Gottingen. In 1848, the Medical Faculty of Zurich 
nominated him Extraordinary Professor, and in 1851 Ordinary Professor. 
In 1855 he undertook the Professorship of Medicine in the Polytechnic 
of Zurich, and also the post of Director of the Microscope- Anatomical 
Institute. From 1854 to 1856 he also filled the position of Kector in the 
“ Hochschule.” His researches in physiology were published in works 
which have been translated into nearly every European language, and 
are valued as models of lucid exposition. His book ‘ Das Mikroskop ’ 
has passed through eight editions, and was translated into English by 
Dr. G. K. Cutter. Prof. Frey was also an accomplished entomologist. 
