on the public days, the visitors may purchase a synopsis, giving a description of the contents, or take any other work with them to compare the descriptions, or plates, with the specimens, or even compare specimens themselves, which is often done to a great extent : and they may take any notes, description, or drawing of the specimens, without fear of their being interrupted. Should the parties require a more accurate examination of, or wish to make drawings from, any of the specimens, two days in each week are set apart for their use. In speaking of the Paris Museum, I may refer to an advantage that collection has possessed which has not been enjoyed by any other; that of having all the specimens from the local collections in France sent to it, from which its professors selected what specimens were wanted for their collection, and the duplicates were then divided into series illustrative of the arrangement of the animal kingdom, and one of this series was sent back to each of the local collections. This is an arrangement that could only be made in a country like France, where all such collections are public property. Napoleon, also, sent to it the specimens which were taken from the museums of the various towns over-run by his armies, few of which were returned at the Peace; for even Holland was satisfied, after a time, to receive duplicates from the French collection in return for the specimens taken from the celebrated museum at Amsterdam. Of late years the Dutch government have constantly employed eight travelling Naturalists in various parts of the world, to replenish its collection; and the duplicates are used to increase their collections by exchanges with other museums, or are distributed to the local collections.* With the advantages that the Paris Museum has enjoyed, it ought * The museums of Leyden, Berlin, and Vienna, also employ travelling collectors, but not to the extent of the French government. It is curious to observe the effect of this manner of obtaining specimens in the various institutions. The collection is generally richest in the productions of those countries where these collectors have been stationed: thus, the Berlin Museum is rich in Mexican, Cape, and Red Sea animals; the Vienna in Brazilian; and Leyden in Javanese, Japanese, and Cape specimens. The Paris Museum, from the number of its collectors, approaches nearer to the English collections, which entirely depend on the industry of travellers or the enterprise of her merchants; and it is, I believe, from the great extent of her trade that more specimens are brought to this country than to all the rest of Europe together, as the foreign collectors appear to have discovered by the repeated visits they pay to England for the purpose of purchasing specimens. to be the richest collection in the world; but this is by no means the case the display of mammalia at Leyden and Frankfort being certainly better. The collection of birds at Paris is very fine, but not very much larger than that of the British Museum or of the museum of the Zoological Society of London; and, it is said, considerably smaller than that of Leyden; but hitherto the birds in the Leyden Museum have not been exhibited to the public. The collection of shells at the Jardin des Plantes is not to be compared with some private ones in London, and is not so large as that in the British Museum. It is not unusual to hear persons speak in raptures of the beasts in the gardens of the Paris Museum; yet it would be madness to compare them, in external appearance, to the collection of the Zoological Society, in London. I should not make these comparisons (for I consider these institutions as different in their constitution as is the character of the two nations) had I not constantly heard persons making similar comparisons, and almost always to the disparagement of the English institutions. In my repeated visits to the Continent, I have, been induced to collect statistical accounts of the several institutions, and to observe their various peculiarities, with the view of introducing into the British Museum any real improvements I might discover. Blackheath, Kent, Nov. 5, 1836. COMPARATIVE ABUNDANCE OF THE CORN AND YELLOW BUNTINGS, (Emberiza miliaria and citrinella) IN ENGLAND. I CAN say, without hesitation, that in almost every part of England I have seen the Yellow Bunting as twenty to one of the Corn Bunting in Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmoreland, I can state, positively, that the Yellow Buntings are still more numerous in proportion; and although I have explored almost every inch of parts of these counties, I never remember to have found a nest there. Chesterfield, Derbyshire, Oct, 1836. W. C. HEWITSON. NOTES ON NATURAL HISTORY BOOKS. No. I.-INSECT ARCHITECTURE. Insect Architecture, Insect Transformations, and Insect Miscellanies (all published in the Library of Entertaining Knowledge), are books too well known to the public to require a lengthy general criticism of their merits. Suffice it, then, to say that they may be regarded as excellent works, containing many original discoveries, shrewd explanations, masterly refutations of errors, and powerful overthrows of false theories, and evincing, in almost every page, very great literary research, considerable judgment in the selection of facts from former works, and much ingenuity in the arrangement of them. They are just the works to be first read by persons desirous of commencing the study of Entomology, and they may be consulted with profit even by those who are proficients. Somewhat similar opinions of these works have been expressed by some of the most competent judges. MASON BEE (Anthophora retusa), p. 33.—“ On the north-east wall of Greenwich Park, facing the road, and about four feet from the ground, we discovered, Dec. 10, 1828, the nest of a Mason Bee, formed in the perpendicular line of cement between two bricks. Externally there was an irregular cake of dry mud, precisely as if ́a handful of wet road-stuff had been taken from a cart-rut and thrown against the wall; though, upon closer inspection, the cake contained more small stones than usually occur in the mud of the adjacent cart-ruts.” This species of Bee is also said to build a mud-hive against the side of a tree or bank; but a writer in the Entomological Magazine (iii., 313) says he has known many instances of there being no external building whatever, the Bees entering the face of the bank by perfectly round smooth holes. Another kind of Bee, Melecta, was [in one instance, at Birch Wood] continually arriving with the Anthophora, and entering their holes; it appeared to be on a perfectly friendly footing with the rest of the community. It is the economy of this Bee to lay its eggs in the nest of the Anthophora; the grubs, on hatching, devour the food provided by the Anthophoræ for their own young, which, thus deprived of their support, shrivel up and die. CELLS OF SOME SPECIES OF BEE FORMED IN AN ELDER BRANCH, p. 51.-" That bees of similar habits, if not the same species as the VOL. V.-NO. XVIII. 2 N Violet Bee (Xylocopa violacea) are indigenous to this country, is proved by Grew, who mentions, in his Rarities of Gresham College, having found a series of cells in the middle of the pith of an old Elder branch, in which they were placed lengthwise, one after another, with a thin boundary between each." As he does not, however, tell us that he was acquainted with the insect which constructed these, it might as probably be allied to the Ceratina albilabris, of which Spinola has given so interesting an account in the Annales du Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle (x., 236). The species whose cells Grew found, may have been the rare Ceratina cærulea, which has been taken on the Viper's Bugloss (Echium vulgare) near Birch Wood (see Entomological Magazine, iii., 310). In the magazine just mentioned (iii., 413), Mr. Edward Doubleday says that having, in Nov., 1835, cut off a branch of Elder, which projected from a hedge at Epping, "I noticed that the pith of it was removed, and on examining it I found that some insect had evidently entered at the top of the branch, which had apparently been broken off some time previous. The pith she must have removed, for the whole length, about eighteen inches, was divided into little cells, in each of which was an oval cocoon, containing a whitish larva. From the many fragments of legs, wings, &c., of Diptera in the cells, these larvæ evidently belong to some one of the fossorial Hymenoptera. I think that Reaumur mentions a similar nidus in a dead branch of Oak." It is a pity that Mr. Doubleday did not rear the larva, so that the species might have been ascertained. HORNET'S NEST, p. 79.-" The Hornet does not build under ground, but in the cavities of trees, or in the thatch, or under the eaves of barns. In the Magazine of Natural History (viii., 628), Mr. J. R. Rowe states, as an exception to the above assertion, his having seen, in July, 1834, a Hornet's nest in a bank of sand and heath. "This nest," he says, was in a recent state, there being only four or five Hornets, and but few cells; the greater number of the latter occupied by grubs." CELLS OF A BEE HIVE, p. 111.-Much has been said on the ingenuity of Bees in constructing cells of an hexagonal form; and it has been asserted that there is no other form equally saving of room under such circumstances: but in Barrow's Tour through Ireland this opinion is shewn to be erroneous. I have not his work at hand, or would quote his remarks, but the reader will find them somewhere before p. 100 of the first volume. THE HIVE BEE'S PROGRESS IN AMERICA, p. 142.-" In this country Bees are not found in a wild state, though it is not uncommon for swarms to stray from their proprietors. But these stray swarms do not spread colonies through our woods, as they are said to do in America. In the remoter parts of that continent there are no wild Bees: they precede civilization; and thus, when the Indians observe a swarm, they say 'The white man is coming!'" Washington Irving has given an account of the progress which the Honey Bee is making westward in America; and the same fact is mentioned by Bartram in his Travels through N. and S. Carolina, Georgia, E. and W. Florida, &c., 1791. "In conversation with a Dr. Grant, in company with whom he happened for a short time to travel, Bartram inquired how it was that westward, among the Creek Indians, he had seen no Bees? Dr. Grant replied that there were few or none west of the Isthmus of Florida, and but one hive in Mobile, which was lately brought from Europe, the English supposing there were none in the country, not finding any when they took possession after the Spanish and French. I have,' says 'I our traveller, been assured by the traders that there are no Bees in West Florida, which to me seems extraordinary and almost incredible, since they are so numerous all along the eastern coast, from Nova Scotia to East Florida, even in the wild forest, as to be thought, by the generality of the inhabitants, aborigines of this continent.' At the present time the Honey Bee is abundant throughout the United States, both as a denizen of the forest and a dependant on man. Generally speaking, the settler in the back woods prefers the precarious but luscious supply afforded by those swarms which have deserted man, and taken up their abode in fissures of rocks or hollows of trees, to the more regular but less abundant supply from hives of his own."-Entomological Magazine, iii., 423. SAW FLIES (Tenthredinida), p. 152.—As Mr. Rennie's account of the Saw Flies is imperfect, though correct so far as it goes, I shall here introduce Mr. James Fennell's paper on Trichiosoma lucorum, which was read some time ago before the London Natural History Society a society now no longer in existence :-" Trichiosoma lucorum is an interesting insect, belonging to the division Mandibulata, order Hymenoptera, and family Tenthredinida. The Tenthredinidæ, commonly called Saw Flies, in their history, are very entertaining to the entomologist; while, in their natural propensities, they are regarded as destructive by the gardener, whose trees and plants are frequently much defoliated by the larvæ, as also by the parent fly, who cuts deep fissures in the branches by means of its |