296. Natural- Historical Collections. 
tended to speak, and with this view he has connected with each article in Pliny 
every thing that has been said by other ancient writers on the same animal; he 
has estimated whatever might be supposed to be fabulous in the traditions and 
narratives of travellers on the animals of distant countries, especially at a period 
when the best informed travellers would be considered at this day very igno- 
rant of natural history; and he has sought thus to obtain an idea of the animal, 
and to discover it amongst those which modern naturalists have inscribed in 
their catalogues. By this method he has arrived at new results, which cannot 
fail to be interesting. 
The Leoncrocotius and the Catablepas appear to him to be the Gnu. The 
Aspicus is the Coluber haje ; the name of dolphin was given also to the sharks ; 
the Tragelaphus is a species of stag lately discovered in the Indies, which has 
horns similar to those of the roebuck, and whose tail is furnished with long hairs ; 
the Lycaon is the hunting leopard ( Felis jubata ; ) the Platanista is the Gan- 
getic dolphin of Roxburgh ; the Acipenser, so famous at certain periods amongst 
the Romans, was the little sturgeon (A. ruthenus, Lin.) The Coracin of 
Egypt is the Labrus niloticus, Lin. The fishes of India, which crawl upon the 
ground, are the Aphicephali. The Phycis, the -only fish which constrnets.a 
nest, is a species of Mediterranean Gobius, which, according to the observa- 
tions of Olivi, makes for itself a habitation of very complicated structure. The 
Chenalopex is the Anas /Egyptiaca, and not the A. tadorna; and the Chereno- 
tes is che Anas Clypeata ; the Attagen is the Tetrao Alchata, Lin. The 
three kinds of Blatta, mentioned by the ancients, are the Dermestes, Tenebrio, 
and Blaps of the moderns, &c. ; 
Amongst the magnificent works which have been devoted in different coun- 
tries to the representation of the productions of nature, there is none which sur- 
passes, in point of finished engraving and colouring, that which M. Audubon is 
publishing on the birds of South America, and there is none which equals the 
size of the plates. The eagles and the grouse are of the natural size, and when 
the bird is not sufficiently large to fill the whole plate, it is repeated in the most 
accustomed attitudes. ‘The Academy has looked with interest on this work, and 
it is a source of great pleasure for its members, as for all friends of science, to 
observe in this day the naturalists of the new world repay with interest to Europe 
the equivalent of instruction which they have received from her. 
MM. Audouin and Milne Edwards, who have associated their efforts to en- 
rich with new observations the anatomy and physiology of the crustacea, and 
with whose researches upon the organs of the circulation in these animals we 
were already acquainted, have presented this year to the Academy, memoirs on 
their respiration and their nervous system. 
M. Milne Edwards has described four little crustacea, which, amongst a great 
number of these animals discovered by him upon the western coasts of France, 
appear to him to be peculiarly interesting, as affording new links between the 
generic forms of this class, already entered in the works of naturalists. 
There is also a crustaceous animal which M. Guerin has described under the 
name of Eurypoda, but of great size, and belonging to the family of crabs, and 
very closely allied to the Inachus, commonly called the sea spider. Its princi- 
pal character is that the last joint but one of the feet is dilated and compressed 
towards the middle of its inferior margin. The same author has described a 
crustacea of the family of Gammari, remarkable for the extremely large eyes 
which occupy nearly the whole surface of its head. He has named it Themisto. 
M. de Blainville has also, during a journey along the shores of the Mediter- 
ranean, made a great number of new and important observations upon animals, 
and has communicated to the Academy those which concern the Physalus, that 
singular production composed of an oval bladder, surmounted by a crest, and 
from whence hang an infinite number of filaments, not less varied in length 
