"I am sorry for Mr Bald's situation; but I hope his friend will soon be well. Remember me to him when you write.

"I dined lately with Lord Leven, when he shewed me a piece of charred wood which he said had been found under a bed of marl, and about which he had had some communications with you. The wood has been charred, I believe, by his Lordship's servants since its resurrection, as its appearance plainly indicated.

"I have enclosed a copy of my paper on Hybernation for Mr Scoresby, that he may see the laws which have been established with regard to the influence of temperature on the plumage of birds, a subject on which he may communicate much valuable information.

"I see a paper in the last vol. of Linn. Trans. on the change of colour in feathers without moulting, without the author being aware that I had two years before established the same opinion, and investigated the laws of the change in Hybernation.

"Mrs F. joins in regards.-Yours ever,

"JOHN FLEMING."

In the course of this year he had completed the important article, Ichthyology, for the Edinburgh Encyclopædia. Among the many testimonies to its ability which were given at the time, no one is more valuable than the impartial criticism of Dr Barclay, the famous extra-academical lecturer on anatomy, to whose teaching even the greatest anatomist of this or any other era, Professor Owen, loves to look back with gratitude. The somewhat curt style in which, in the following communication, the accomplished author of "Life and Organization refers to the Ichthyology, is characteristic of the man, and the appended note is not less characteristic of the "Laird of Canonmills" :

"6 Argyll Square, May 2. 1819.

"My Dear Sir, I have read your article Ichthyology with much pleasure and with much instruction; and where the subject admits of it, I think the language elegant. I have no fault whatever with your plan, it is excellent; but I wish you had bestowed more pains on the execution. Like most authors in treating of a science with which they are familiar, you have supposed your readers to know more than can reasonably be expected of them in commencing their studies. In the first chapter we are introduced to a number of symbolical views, before we are fully instructed in

*The basis of this, which still continues a valuable work, is given in a contribution by Barclay to the Wernerian, Dec. 1815, on "Causes of Organization."

the principles of any one arrangement. Rather astonish us at first with the immense variety of these animals; then mention the attempts at arrangement; on what views these attempts were made; give us one complete arrangement as a standard of comparison, and then the synoptical views in their order. In anatomy, you use the word cranium for the head, and say it is large in proportion to the size of the body. Now the cranium is small for the size of the body, but the head, which includes the bones of the face, remarkably large. The bones of the vertebræ are formed of cartilaginous rings, but contain a fluid not a cartilaginous substance. In page 667 you call the transverse processes spinous, but the spinous processes on ribs are attached. You speak of bones unconnected with the skeleton; it would have been better to have said that many bones of the skeleton are connected only through the medium of soft parts, as the upper extremities in many quadrupeds are connected with the trunk. All bones in fish are not softer than in the mammalia. The bones of the ear are, in some fishes, as hard as any bones in the mammalia. The spinal marrow is conveyed in fishes, in the same way as in quadrupeds and birds, on the dorsal aspect of the vertebræ and in the bifurcation of the spinous processes; but the spinous processes are not inclined, and they stand at a distance, so that the spinal marrow can easily be seen through the large intermediate spaces. Your terms, superior and inferior, posterior and anterior, have sometimes a reference to the back and breast, and sometimes to the head and tail. If you adopt not my nomenclature, at least use terms of a definite meaning. The meaning which you put into ambiguous terms will not always be the meaning that is taken out of them. I was expecting to have seen you in Edinburgh this week, and was congratulating myself on the pleasure of a long conversation upon these subjects. Cuvier came quite safe; and I am, with best respects to Mrs Fleming, my dear Sir, yours with esteem, and most sincerely, "JOHN BARCLAY."

"My Dear Sir,-The Doctor having written his sentiments at my request, handed me the letter, open. Let me know whether you possess Barclay's Anatomical Nomenclature.' If not, it shall be at Flisk next week. I stated to the Doctor that your only objection would probably be to the adverbs, which are not constructed according to the English analogy; -dorsad, sternad, &c. Prof. Jameson read your paper, and shewed the specimens. In concluding, he made some remarks, first praising, and then expressing a hope that you would extend the paper before publication, and also try to give specimens of some of the minerals and petrifactions not sent. Mohs* and Brewster were there. Mohs spoke to me of you, and

* Frederick Mohs, Professor of Mineralogy at Freyburgh, known to mineralogists by his "System of Crystallography," an able review of which, from the pen of Sir David Brewester, appeared in 1821. See Wernerian Transactions, vol. iii, "On the Primitive forms of Rocks ;" and for a paper by Mohs,

regretted he saw so little of you. Both of them, with Jameson, Allan, &c., came to Canonmills to dine. "PAT. NEILL."

The enumeration, in the introductory remarks, of the mode of treatment to be followed, shews that he had attained to a point of view in advance of most naturalists. He resolved to deal with his subject in such a way as that, while systematic arrangement and strictly defined specific characteristics should be kept in view, he would give heed to structural peculiarities, to habits as far as they could be ascertained, and to the economic value of different species. In reviewing the History of Ichthyology, he gives the names of twenty-four authors whose works he had consulted, and of eighteen whose proposed systems he had examined. The writer has looked into several of the least accessible of these, and he finds that the outline given by Dr Fleming bears evidence that he had well studied the original works. These works range from 1533 and 1555, in which years respectively, Belon published his "De Aquatilibus," and "La Nature et Diversité des Poissons avec leurs Portraits,” up to 1803–4, when the Ichthyological part of Shaw's "General Zoology" was given to the public. In the survey he deals carefully and critically with the systems of Willoughby and Ray, Dale, Artedi, Klein, Linnæus, Gronovious, Brunich, Cuvier, Lacepede, &c. His notices of writers on British Ichthyology are equally numerous and discriminating. They range from Merret's "Pinax Rerum Naturalium Britannicarum," 1667, to Low's "Fauna Orcadensis," 1813. Among others, he notices Donovan, and his friends Turton, Montagu, and Patrick Neill.* The chapters on "Structure and Functions," and on the "Condition of Fishes," may be read by the young Ichthyologist with profit, even now when this branch of science has come to be associated with so many more great names than even those quoted above.†

"General Reflections on various important subjects in Mineralogy," Edin. Phil. Jour., vol. xiii., 1825.

* Neill's "List of Fishes found in the Firth of Forth, and Rivers and Lakes near Edinburgh," was read to the Wernerian, and is printed in vol. i. of the Transactions.

Prof. Owen, Milne Edwards, Agassiz, the Prince de Canino, Yarrel, &c.

CHAPTER III. 1820 to 1829.

Hydrozoa-Beroë- Hirudines

- Scisssurella - Insecta

Helminthology Voyage in 1821-Submarine Forests-Philosophy of Zoology-Letters from Curier, Barclay, Turton, &c.-Separate Papers-Distribution of British Animals-Modern Strata - The Deluge-Dr Buckland - Sir William Hooker-Professor Jameson-History of British AnimalsAntiquarian Pursuits-Tombden Wares-The Old Red-Hugh Miller— Dr Anderson's Mistakes-Climate of the Arctic Regions-Rev. W. Conybeare-Pig's Foot Controversy-Dr Mantel-The Wheat-Fly.

HAVING finished Ichthyology, Dr Fleming set himself earnestly to work in Natural History. He had, for a good while, been giving much attention to the general views, which were soon afterwards matured and embodied in "The Philosophy of Zoology." His correspondence at this time also bears evidence that he was rapidly accumulating those stores of knowledge, which were to find a place, as illustrative facts, bases for induction, and authoritative references, in "The British Animals." In 1820, he was labouring successfully among the Hydrozoa. To the Wernerian, he sent the description of “a species of the genus Beroë,* which had not hitherto found a place in "British Zoology." In the same communication, he told the Society that he had found in the neighbourhood of Flisk, two leeches, also new, Hirudo tesselata and H. lineata. Soon after, he communicated "Observations on some species of the genus Vermiculum of Montagu," and described four new species. To the same Society he made known his discovery of the pretty Scissurella crispata, which continues to be associated with his name, in recent works on Systematic Conchology. The circumstances connected with this discovery, well illustrate his shrewdness as an observer. So early as *ACALEPHA. Ord. Ctenophora-Fam. Beroidæ. † Now described under Serpulado.

Family, Haliotida.

1809, he had found, among the sand thrown up by the tide in Zetland, a small argonauta-looking shell, a specimen of which he forwarded to his friend Montagu, but was surprised to find that he regarded it as nothing more than the fry of Trochus. This did not satisfy him; and having, in 1824, shewn them to a brother naturalist, he learned that M. Alcide D'Orbigny had instituted a genus-Scissurella-for the reception of species analogous to those in his possession. When he obtained D'Orbigny's descriptions, he found, as he had suspected, that the species on hand were new. His most important works, however, at this period, were the elaborate articles on Insecta and Helminthology, written for the Edinburgh Encyclopædia. Though he was dissatisfied with the former, it yet contains much information on the structure, functions, and classification of insects. It is interesting, too, as containing what, I believe, was the first popular statement of some of those remarkable facts in the reproduction of insects, which go to establish a true, so called, lucina sine concubitu, in certain families of insects.

"In the Aphides, he says, or plant lice as they are called, the females retain the eggs at one time until they are hatched, and at another, lay them like other insects. There is another circumstance no less remarkable in these insects; one act of impregnation not only renders fertile the eggs of the individual, but the young produced from these eggs, and from the eggs of those, even until the ninth generation.”*

The article on Helminthology is even more elaborate, and has had much more care bestowed upon it than that on Insecta. It has, however, the fault common to most Encyclopædia papers, on great divisions of Natural History: too much has been attempted in it. But this could not well have been

* The Aphis lanigera produces each year ten viviparous broods, and one which is oviparous, and each generation averages 100 individuals. First generation, one Aphis, produces 100 at the second generation; and at the tenth generation the progeny yields 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 from one aphis in one year. "The condition," says Owen, "which renders this seemingly strange and mysterious generation of an embryo without precedent coitus, possible, is the retention of a portion of the germ mass unchanged."-Comparative Anatomy of the Invertebrata, Lecture xviii.