asserted, ever invented letters, or constructed a durable architecture. Among the Malays, whose bread is rice, the term "root-eater" is one of reproach, equivalent to savage. When the inhabitants of the celebrated Spice Islands were first seen by Europeans, their only bread was sago, or the pith of palms; and notwithstanding the possession, even the natural monopoly, of the then much-coveted clove and nutmeg, they were not only ignorant of letters, but had not even the rudest calendar. They had not even invented iron, which, together with their clothing, they received from strangers; and, but for the accident of their spices, they must have been downright savages, hardly on a level with the South-Sea Islanders. Had the bread of Britons some 2000 years ago been confined to the potato, Julius Cæsar would unquestionably have found our ancestors far greater barbarians than he describes them to have been, and they would surely not have encountered him with horses drawing armed chariots.

Perhaps the most advanced social position ever attained by men living on mere roots and fruits was that of the South-Sea Islanders. They cultivated no cereal, not even the humblest millet, but they were well supplied with farina-yielding plants-such as the yam, the sweet potato, the taro, and the breadfruit; still their advance was of the humblest, for they had not even invented pottery or textile fabrics, having nothing better than paper for raiment. [They had pottery.ED.]

It is possible for a people to attain a very respectable civilization when living on one of the chief cereals, although it be not the very highest. The mass of the Russians, and even of the Belgians, live on rye, and the mass of the people of Scotland on oats, although their condition would undoubtedly have been better had their bread been of wheat. The respectable amount of civilization which the Irish had attained after their conversion to Christianity, and which resulted in the adoption of foreign letters, and the construction of the round towers, was accomplished by growers and consumers of barley and oats. Had they been strangers to these, and their main food consisted, as it afterwards did, of a single root, their ancient civilization never could have existed on the contrary, they would have been on a lower level than the South-Sea Islanders, who possessed a far greater variety of sustenance, with a more benignant climate.

But the potato is by no means the lowest quality of bread on which

a people can live and multiply. The lowest is that which is most easily produced, that is, which is produced with the smallest amount of skill and labour, and in this respect the banana is before the potato, and the sago perhaps even below the banana. The banana yields a crop in ten months from the time of planting, perpetuates itself by rattoons, and requires little care in its growth. Humboldt reckons that the produce of the same extent of land in bananas and wheat is in the proportion of 135 of banana to 1 of wheat, and that of the potato as 44 to 1. The sago-palm takes about ten years to yield its produce, but grows in a bog where nothing else will thrive, requires no care in culture, and, like the banana, propagates itself by shoots. Mr. Logan estimates the produce of the sago-palm, compared with wheat, as 163 to 1, and as compared to the potato, as 53 to 1. The quantity of nutriment contained in the banana and sago are by no means in proportions thus given, for we have to deduct the large proportion of water which they contain, and the absence in them of gluten, the most nutritious portion of the cerealia. Humboldt informs us that the Spanish settlers in America were so satisfied of the evil consequences of living on the banana that they frequently entertained the violent remedy of extirpating the plant, as the only cure for overcoming the apathy and idleness of those who made it their only bread-the Indians and half-breeds. The sago-feeders, however, are by no means so prepossessed in favour of sago, and never fail to prefer rice, or even the yam and sweet-potato, their consumption of it being a matter of necessity and not of choice.

A plain objection to root and similar crops, as compared to cereals, remains to be noticed. Root crops are, with few exceptions, incapable of being stored for a length of time, so that the superfluity of one harvest shall make up for deficiency of a future one. The potato lasts but for a year at best, and the tropical roots not much longer, while wheat, oats, and barley will keep for ten years; rice, in the husk, for fifty; while with the cereals there is far less difficulty in storing and transport.

Abstracts of the more important remaining papers will be given in the next number of the Journal.

NEW PUBLICATION.

Contributions towards a Cybele Hibernica, being Outlines of the Geographical Distribution of Plants in Ireland. By D. MOORE, Ph.D., and A. G. MORE, F.L.S. Dublin: Hodges, Smith, and Co. London: Van Voorst. 8vo. Pp. 399.

This is a work the appearance of which will be welcomed by all who are interested in geographical botany. The distribution of species through Britain proper being ascertained and registered with greater detail and precision than has been anywhere else attained, it became a point of much interest to know clearly which of them reached Ireland, and how these were dispersed abroad over its surface. The published material for information was scattered and scanty. It is now thirty years since the issue of Mackay's 'Flora Hibernica,' and the work did not profess to do more for Ireland than the British Flora' did for Britain. There are in the whole island but two good and full local Floras, Dr. Power's 'Botanist's Guide for the County of Cork,' and Professor Dickie's Flora of Ulster, and Botanist's Guide through the North of Ireland,' and a few lists and records of excursions scattered amongst the periodicals and transactions of the Dublin Society and Botanical Society of Edinburgh. Dr. Moore and Mr. More have adopted the twelve provinces sketched out several years ago by Professor Babington, and have traced out the distribution of each species through these as well as they could by means of the published records, their own field observations, and the help of the few resident collectors scattered through the country, carefully sifting the list, rejecting many species and stations which rest upon doubtful or unconfirmed authority, and furnishing a classified list of special stations for all but the commonest plants. The work is in a conveniently portable form, and is illustrated by a coloured map of the twelve botanical provinces; and it is probable that we get a better book from both of them working in combination than either could have produced separately, or than could have been furnished by any one else.

The range of average temperature in Ireland does not differ materially from that of England. The isotherm of the Cork and Kerry coast is about the same as that of Helston and Ventnor, 52 degrees, and that of the north-east is from 47 to 48 degrees, the same as

the low country in the Tyne province and Yorkshire. The annual rainfall at Dublin is stated at twenty-six inches, that of the south-west at from forty to sixty inches; but it is probable that we derive a clearer idea of the climate in respect of the humidity of the atmosphere from the fact that there are upwards of 2000 square miles of peat-moss at a low level underlaid by limestone than from these last figures. The area of the whole island is 32,500 square miles, rather more than that of Scotland, and more than half that of England, of which a quarter is arable land, one-eighth peat-moss, and at least 1000 miles is occupied by lakes and rivers.

The physical geography of the island is very peculiar. The centre is occupied by a great plain underlaid by carboniferous limestone, a tract not far short of 20,000 square miles in area, three times the size of Wales, which stretches from Dublin to Galway, and from Armagh and Donegal in the north, to the borders of Cork and Waterford. The only material interruption to the continuity of this are two groups of hills, the Slieve Bloom and the Slieve Baughta, which rise from the two opposite sides of the Shannon near its mouth. Outside the plain there are four principal mountainous tracts, one in each of the four provinces. In Ulster nearly the whole province stretches beyond it; and in the mountains we have the three physico-geographical regions of Scotland represented in nearly equal proportions. Throughout Donegal, extending into Derry and Tyrone, is an outlying slice of the Scotch highlands, only a small part actual granite, the rest mica-slate, reaching an altitude of 2462 feet in Errigal. Between Lough Neagh and the coast through Derry and Antrim we have a prolongation of the trap hills of the Lothians, Fifeshire, and Clydesdale; and in the south a Silurian tract, representing the clay-slate region that stretches from the dales of the Tweed to the Mull of Galloway. The mountains of the Connaught coast are a prolongation still further west of the Donegal granite and mica-slate range. The highest peak in Mayo (Mwllrea) reaches 2682 feet, and the Connemara hills 2400 feet. In Leinster the range immediately adjoining the central plain is grante, rising in the Wicklow hills to 3000 feet; and between this and the sea the Silurian formation occupies a considerable space. From Waterford to the coast through the southern half of Munster stretches the finest mountain-chain of the island, a region of Devonian conglomerate and clay-slate like Cornwall and North Wales, filling up the entire

counties of Cork and Kerry, rising in Macgillicuddy's Reeks nearly to the height of Snowdon and Skiddaw, running out sharply in an abrupt and sterile ridge to the western coast, where Mount Brandon rises from the Atlantic seaboard to a height of 3126 feet. We shall not be far wrong if we estimate the central plain at 20,000 square miles, the Ulster tract outside it at 5000, and the other three mountainous regions regions roughly at 2000 square miles each.

Taking the number of species for Britain proper at Mr. Watson's estimate of 1425 species, our authors claim for Ireland about 1000. Of the 532 plants of the British type Ireland has all, or very nearly so. The Atlantic type is the only other one where she has decidedly more than half, forty-one species out of seventy. Of the Boreal species (Highland, Scottish, and Intermediate types taken together), although there is not a single one of the twelve provinces in which there is not a hill of upwards of 2000 feet in altitude, Ireland has only 106 species out of 238, Of the 458 English and local species she has just over one-half; and, finally, out of the 127 Germanic species only 18.

Doubtful species being left out, the number of species ascertained in Ireland, but not known in Britain proper, is reduced to twelve. Only five of these-Saxifraga Geum, Erica mediterranea, Arbutus Unedo, Dabacia polifolia, and Neotinea intacta-are for Europe as a whole specially south-western in their distribution; whilst three-Sisyrinchium anceps, Neottia gemmipara, Naias flexilis, and, if we add the Eriocaulon, four-are North American plants not known on the European continent.

BOTANICAL NEWS.

The fifth part of Dr. Seemann's 'Flora of the Fiji Islands' has just been published. This completes the Polypetalous and Monopetalous Orders.

·

The Report of the Marlborough College Natural History Society for the half-year ending Midsummer, 1866,' has been issued, giving satisfactory proof of the activity of this young and flourishing Society. By the new plan of working by sections," more real progress is made in natural history study than by the general meetings of the Society, at which only very elementary knowledge can be imparted, and all that is said must necessarily be couched in language as much as possible intelligible to the general audience.

'The Liverpool Naturalists' Journal' for June, July, August, and September (nos. i.-iv.), have come to hand. This Journal is published by Adam Holden, of Liverpool, in connection with the Liverpool Naturalists' Field Club, and is a