North American Review.

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Singing Birds.

Those who have paid attention to the singing of birds, know well that their voice, energy, and expression differ as widely as in man; and agreeably to this remark, Mr. Wilson (the celebrated ornithologist) says he was so familiar with the notes of an individual wood thrush, that he could recognise him from all his fellows the moment he entered the woods.

Mag.  Nat.  Hist.

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Gigantic Fossils.

Some gigantic bones have been exhibited at New Orleans, but the place where they were found is not mentioned in the communication.  They consist of one of the bones of the cranium, fifteen or twenty vertebras, two entire ribs, and part of a third, one thigh bone, two bones of the leg, &c.  The cranial bone was upwards of twenty feet in its greatest length, about four in extreme width, and it weighed 1,200 lbs.  The ribs measured nine feet along the curve, and about three inches in thickness.  It had been conjectured that the animal to which these bones belonged was amphibious, and perhaps of the crocodile family.  It was also supposed that the animal when alive, must have measured twenty-five feet round the body, and about 130 feet in length.

Trans. **Geoloy.  Soc.

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The Cochineal Insect.

Our readers are doubtless aware that cochineal, so extensively used in this country for dying,[1] is a beautiful insect abundantly found in various parts of Mexico and Peru.  Some of these insects have lately been sent over to Old Spain, and are doing remarkably well on the prickly pear of that country; indeed, they are said to rival even those of Mexico in the quality and brilliancy of their dye.

Their naturalization may doubtless be extended along the shores of the Mediterranean, Sicily, and the different states of Greece.  The prickly pear is indigenous in those places, and by little cultivation will afford sufficient nourishment for the cochineal insects.  We are also assured, (says an intelligent correspondent of The Times,) that these precious insects were introduced last year on the island of Malta, by Dr. Gorman, on account of the government, and that they are likely to do well on that island.

Dr. Gorman discovered a few weeks since, in the botanic garden at Cambridge, the grona sylvestris, or wild species of cochineal, living among the leaves of the coffee-plants, the acacia, &c.  This is the kermes, or gronilla of Spain, about which so much has been said in endeavouring to identify it with the grona fina.  At all events, this is the same species as the gronilla found on the hairs of the green oaks in Andalusia; and in some years large and valuable crops of the gronilla are gathered in that part of Spain by the peasantry, and sold to the Moors to dye their scarlet.