[Illustration:  Profile of M. Lamouroux]

Quitting the departed for the living, I send you a profile of M. Lamouroux, the professor of natural history at this university, to whom we have been personally indebted for the kindest attention.  His name is well known to you, as that of a man who has, perhaps, deserved more than any other individual at the hands of every student of marine Botany.  His treatises upon the Classification of the Submersed Algae, have been honored with admission in the Memoires du Museum d’Histoire Naturelle, and have procured him the distinction of being elected into the National Institute:  his subsequent publication on the Corallines, is an admirable manual, in a very difficult branch of natural history; and he is now preparing for the press, a work of still greater labor and more extensive utility, an arrangement of the organized fossils found in the vicinity of Caen.

The whole of this neighborhood abounds in remains of the antediluvian world:  they are found not only in considerable quantity, but in great perfection.  In the course of last year; a fossil crocodile was dug up at Allemagne, a village about a mile distant, imbedded in blue lias.  Other specimens of the same genus, comprising, as it appears, two species, both of them distinct from any that are known in a living state, had previously been discovered in a bed of similar hard blue limestone, near Havre and Honfleur, as well as upon the opposite shores of England.  But the Caen specimen is the most interesting of any, as the first that has been seen with its scales perfect; and the naturalists here have availed themselves of the opportunity thus afforded them, to determine it by a specific character, and give it the name of Crocodilus Cadomensis.

The civil and ecclesiastical history of Caen will be amply illustrated in the forthcoming volumes of the Abbe de la Rue, as he is preparing a work on the subject, a l’instar of the Essays of St. Foix.  In the leading events of the duchy, we find the town of Caen had but little share.  It is only upon the occasion of two sieges from our countrymen, the one in 1346, the other in 1417, that it appears to have acted a prominent part.  The details of the first siege are given at some length by Froissart.—­Edward IIIrd, accompanied by the Black Prince, had landed at La Hogue; and, meeting with no effectual resistance, had pillaged the towns of Barfleur, Cherbourg, Carentan, and St. Lo, after which he led his army hither.  Caen, as Froissait tells us, was at that time “large, strong, and full of drapery and all other sorts of merchandize, rich citizens, noble dames and damsels, and fine churches.”  In its defence were assembled the Constable of France, with the Counts of Eu, Guignes, and Tancarville.  But the wisdom of the generals was defeated by the impetuosity of the citizens.  They saw themselves equal in number to the invaders, and, without reflecting how little