as five Cottonian on paper, all injured in the fire of 1731, have been carefully repaired, inlaid, and rebound.  The purchases include a Psalter of the tenth century, formerly belonging to the monastery of Stavelot, in the diocese of Liege,—­’a remarkably fine Greek Ms.’ containing the works ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite,—­and the Homilies of Gregory of Nazianzum, ’with scholia written in the year 6480 (A.D. 972);’—­together with nineteen additional volumes of a series of transcripts from the Archives at the Hague, of documents relating to English history, extending from 1588 to 1614 and from 1689 to 1702.—­In the ’Department of Natural History,’ we find that great progress has been made in the arrangement of the contents of Room No.  VI.,—­its wall cases having been entirely filled with the gigantic Osseous Remains of Edentata and Pachydermata, and that the Central Room of the Northern Zoological Gallery has been devoted to a collection of the Beasts, Birds, Fish, Reptiles, Shells, Sea Eggs, Starfish, and Corals found in the British Islands.  The purchases include ‘a silver decadrachm of Alexander the Great,’ from the collection of Colonel Rawlinson,—­the first ever discovered,—­’and two very rare British gold coins, having on them the name tin.’”

The end.

NOTES

[1:  Undoubtedly the finest coral is dredged from the Mediterranean; it is an important article of commerce at Marseilles.]

[2:  “The shrikes, or butcher-birds (laniadae), are a numerous and widely-diffused assemblage, living upon the smaller birds and insects; the former of which the shrike sticks, when killed, upon thorns, as a butcher hangs up meat in his stall; hence the name of the genus.”—­Vestiges of Creation.]

[3:  Vestiges of Creation.]

[4:  These birds build in the crevices of precipitous rocks, and tho female lines the nest with the down plucked from her breast.  From these nests natives rob the down and sell it.]

[5:  Vestiges of Creation.]

[6:  “Oxides are neutral compounds, containing oxygen in equivalent proportions.”—­Dr. Ure.]

[7:  Sesquicarbonate of soda that is found in the west of the Delta.  In Mexico there are several natron lakes.]

[8:  The cuneiform character, which was used in every part of Asia Minor, up to the time of Alexander the Great, consists of a series of wedges or accents variously combined, as, [Cuneiform:  *** **]].

[9:  A Metope may be described as the intermediate space in a Doric frieze, between two triglyphs, or separating grooves.]